Slowly Fading Novels & Stories

The coolness seeped right into my bones. "It's fine. Gayle's sick. It's only normal that she's in a bad mood," Florence said understandingly. She picked up an apple by the side and said, "Let me help you peel an apple. You need the vitamins." Before I could answer, she picked up the fruit knife. Cyrus smiled at her and looked on. Her movements were clumsy. The peel came off in uneven strips, taking chunks of flesh with it. Suddenly, she let out a small cry.

“What’s happening?” The medic’s expression tightened, her eyes narrowing slightly as she watched. “It shouldn’t be doing this.” The light flickered again, uneven now, breaking apart in small, unstable pulses that lacked any kind of rhythm or control, and whatever sense of calm had settled over the space began to unravel. Then Celeste’s markings started to fade. Slowly at first, almost imperceptible, but unmistakable. The silver lines beneath her skin dimmed, their glow weakening as if something was draining the life out of them instead of restoring it, and the longer it continued, the more obvious it became that this wasn’t healing.

"Meaning if anyone asks, I belong to you." "Meaning if anyone moves against you, they answer to us." I look at the card in my hand. I look at the body on the floor. I think about Kai this morning, sitting at the small table in our room at the Halverson building, eating his breakfast with the careful concentration of a child who has been told to take his time with everything because rushing makes his symptoms worse. His fingernails flashed silver three times while I watched him eat. Three times in twenty minutes. Two months ago it was once a day. The Fade is accelerating.

She squeezed his fingers until her knuckles turned white. "Finn?" He let out a long, shaky breath. He was still there. She stood up and walked to the door, stepping out onto the small porch. Kael was sitting on a stump, sharpening a knife. The moon was high, casting long, silver shadows across the clearing. "How are they?" Kael asked without looking up. "Fading," she said. She leaned against the doorframe, her strength finally leaving her. "They’re both just... fading away like smoke. And I’m just standing here watching it happen."

pulse from Earth grew faint, stretched out into a low, agonizing drone by the time-dilation. ​"We’re entering the Slow-Zone," Nora gasped, her amber glow pulsing irregularly. "Everything... feels... heavy, Papa. My heart... it’s beating once... every... minute." ​"Focus on the Friction, Nora," Kael grunted, his own voice sounding like gravel being ground in slow motion. "Don't let the gravity pull the song out of you."

The surgeon told me that amputating my leg could buy me one more year, and asked whether I'd accept it. My breath caught. I hesitated a long time, and then I messaged my wife anyway. "The surgery could give me another year. Do you want me to do it?" One minute before they wheeled me into the operating room, my phone finally buzzed. A message read "Hope this helps"! And a cash transfer. The same as every message I'd sent her for three years. Ever since our wedding night, when I asked her for five hundred thousand dollars, Victoria had been certain I was exactly the gold digger her friends said I was. So when I was hospitalized saving her life, she sent money. When I begged her to come

Sebastian Morrison was the most famous fireworks designer in the world. We'd been together for seven years, and countless times, I'd hinted that I wanted a fireworks show that belonged only to me. Every time, he just ruffled my hair. "Next time it's your birthday," he'd say, "I'll design you the most beautiful one yet." The night of my birthday, I rushed to the beach, my heart full of anticipation. Instead, I found Sebastian standing under a sky full of fireworks, his arms wrapped around Victoria Grey. The fireworks burst over the water, dazzling, like a dream. Just not one that belonged to me. I stood frozen at the edge of the crowd. Someone nearby laughed and said, "I heard this des

In my previous life, my boyfriend's female best friend, Yvette Larson, decided to play a cruel prank on the firefighters with a few of her friends. They deliberately set off the fire alarm in our apartment complex and filled one of the rooms with smoke. "When the fire trucks get here, we'll hide and film them scrambling around trying to rescue everyone. This is going to go viral!" I did everything I could to stop them. I warned Yvette that they were wasting emergency resources and could even cause a stampede. However, she called me a buzzkill, and my boyfriend accused me of sticking my nose where it did not belong. Hence, I secretly called the property management office and tipped them of

They pulled away from each other after what seemed like eternity, he still smiled at her, wiping her teary face with the back of his hands. "I wish you didn't have to see me like this." He said softly, collapsing into the bed. He looked slimmer than he ever was, the tawny hoodie which he wore gulped all of his figure and a large mass of curls seemed to have vanished from his head, his eyes filled with an ennui that surmised his demeanor. Even his smile was faint. Weak. He was fading away slowly.

The fading had begun. Ancient werewolves did not age the way humans aged. They did not develop the visible external decline of human aging in the same progression. What happened instead was more internal and more gradual, a slow dimming of the specific vitality that sustained them, the particular light going quieter over time until eventually it went quiet completely. It was not painful in the physical sense. It was simply the end of what had been a very long life arriving in its own time. Lyanna said she had perhaps a year. Possibly less.