Ruined By Design Novels & Stories

Waylen said. They didn’t expect Mr. Waylen to say that his design was very bad. Everyone looked at him. He turned off the big screen and continued, “I want to confess one thing to you. To be honest, a year ago, my inspiration had been exhausted. I could no longer design anything. Every piece of work I designed in the past was filled with love I had for my lover. She died, and I could not longer design good works.” At this point, an uproar broke out among the audience.

But we can't be sure. “Vandalism?” I was shocked. Part of me couldn't help but be happy. All stolen designs were now on fire. Carlos had no right to them anyway. He had used werewolves for cheap labor. All of that jewelry had been designed on the backs of slaves. I suppressed a satisfied smile. There was something about within the building burn that actually made me feel quite good. Maybe this was the universe. Maybe this was karma. Maybe Carlos was finally getting what he deserved.

He left the same way he came—quiet, careful, disappearing into the dark between the trees. I stayed on the porch until the light upstairs went out again. When I finally went inside and locked the door, my phone buzzed one more time. It was a message from Julian. Saw you two by the pool house earlier. Interesting place for a key exchange. I stared at the screen until it went black. My hands felt cold. I typed nothing back. Outside, the estate stayed quiet, but the silence no longer felt safe.

Seeing my designs up there should have felt like a victory, but with Caspian standing next to them, it felt like a target. "This," Caspian said, his voice slicing through the room like a scalpel, "is a failure of imagination. Miss St. Claire, the structural integrity of your atrium is as flimsy as your excuses for why the file was 'missing' in the first place. You’ve designed a birdcage, not a building. It’s fragile. It’s desperate. It’s beneath the standards of this institution."

He wasn't judging her work; he was trying to ruin it. He flipped over to his last slide. It was Brief, blaming words in bold, black letters: FINAL THOUGHT: DESIGN WON'T WORK AND IS A BIG DANGER TO PEOPLE.

But I stayed still. “Design,” Vanessa continued, “shouldn’t be about idealism or nostalgia. It’s about results. About knowing when to cut your losses and move on from outdated ideas… and outdated people.” She clicked to the next slide, and my stomach twisted into knots. “This piece,” she said, her smile razor-sharp, “is a perfect example of how even flawed ideas can serve as inspiration. We had a former employee,” she paused for effect, letting her eyes sweep the crowd before landing directly on me, “who was… quite passionate.”

"That's when you record everything. Not just the offer—the methodology. The pattern. Get him to explain how he does it. How he's done it before. Appeal to his ego. Let him think he's teaching you something. Men like Shaw love to explain how clever they are." I looked at the folder, at the evidence of forty years of destruction. At the faces in the photos—designers I'd admired, careers I'd seen collapse, women I'd thought had simply failed. They hadn't failed. They'd been destroyed. Systematically. By a predator who'd been operating unchecked for decades. "I'll do it," I said. "But not just for me. For all of them. For every designer he destroyed."

“Have you ever felt obsolete, Leon?” The blow was so direct and precise that he lost his breath. It was the word that haunted his own darkest thoughts in sleepless early mornings. Obsolete. A tool whose function had vanished. An outdated architectural model. “Every day,” the confession escaped him in a hoarse whisper, an admission torn out by the darkness, the alcohol, her rawness. “Every day I get up and design spaces for people who want things I no longer understand. I build houses for families who laugh and fight, and I come back to this… this capsule of silence. I look in the mirror and see a man who has become a well-designed piece of furniture. Functional. Without surprises. Obsolete.”

Even though she had been scrounging here for days, the scene remained the same: rusted weaponry, shattered statues, and the remains of a grandeur that had long since lost its significance. The silence and emptiness that occupied the spaces where life had flourished should have become second nature to her by now. However, every day seemed brand-new, and every rubble pile presented a fresh challenge. Zara detested it. despised the memories they evoked, hated the ruins. The reason she was here, however, was to ensure her survival. Broken electronics, lost texts, and food or water scraps that would have meant the difference between life and death were among the items discovered in these ruins.

Catherine - _*]:min-w-0 !gap-3.5"> I've always believed that ruin has a particular sound—not the dramatic crash you'd expect, but something quieter. More insidious. Like the whisper of silk against skin as expensive dresses are folded into trunks, or the hollow thud of books being stacked in crates. The sound of a life being dismantled, piece by careful piece.