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immortal

Bearing Fruit

Marcus is thirty-one years old, blind since nineteen, and living a narrow but stable life in a city apartment when he dies on a Tuesday afternoon without warning or explanation. What comes after isn't what he expected — a system finds him in the nothing, offers him a singular assisted entry onto the path of cultivation, and asks him to choose a vessel. He chooses a mango tree. Not for strategic reasons. For a slice of fruit his mother handed him on a street in Bangkok when he was nine years old, and the wish he never stopped carrying to taste it again. He becomes a seed in a pot in an apartment he can't identify, conscious before he has roots or leaves, with a cultivation system he can barely access and a perception range of three feet. He has no body, no voice, no way to move or act. He has time, a library of knowledge he must earn the right to read, and a hand that comes through his perception dome at the same time every morning to water him. That hand belongs to Maya Reeves — a research scientist in her late thirties who grows plants as a hobby and keeps meticulous notes on all fourteen pots on her windowsill. She finds the mango seedling in her lemongrass pot one morning without explanation and almost pulls it. She doesn't. Something makes her not want to. After weeks of careful observation, Marcus initiates the Heartwood connection — a cultivation feature that links him to Maya as both teacher and cultivation source. Through it he begins giving her quests, cultivation knowledge and eventually a method suited precisely to who she is: the Evergreen Method, a wood element cultivation technique designed for practitioners whose lives already involve daily contact with living things. Maya cultivates through her mornings and her greenhouse work and her hands in soil, and Marcus refines the raw energy she provides and returns it clean, keeping a small share for his own slow accumulation. The arrangement is symbiotic. Maya progresses faster than would otherwise be possible in a modern world stripped of spiritual energy. Marcus grows faster than a sapling in a terracotta pot has any right to. Neither of them fully understands what they're building together, though both are paying close attention. Maya's family — her steady husband James, her sharp eighteen-year-old daughter Claire, and her six-year-old son Sam who pressed his palm against the pot one Saturday morning and announced it felt warm — are drawn into the orbit of what the tree is doing one by one. Each of them has spiritual roots. Each of them will eventually have to decide what to do about that. Marcus, for his part, is patient. He has been patient since before he had leaves. He cultivates one small deliberate change at a time and watches the household around him become something neither of them planned for — a family learning to grow alongside a tree that is learning to grow alongside them. He still thinks about that mango from the street market in Bangkok. He thinks he might, eventually, be able to do something about that. Bearing Fruit is a slow-burn cultivation novel about consciousness, care, interdependence, and what it means to become something new without losing what you were. It is also, among other things, about a blind man who loved mangoes and made an unusual choice in the dark.
King_soul · 5.6k Views

The Dread Knight’s Rage

Solomon’s life is simple. Find food. Avoid dying. Sneak onto ships. Repeat. A homeless orphan forced to flee his homeland after a brutal war, he has no relatives and even less money. His greatest talents are surviving (Barely), staying unnoticed (Easy when he’s anorexic), and finding salvageable meals out of dumpsters. So naturally, fate decides to throw him a bone. After a bizarre encounter drops him into the orbit of a prominent noble family, Solomon finds himself dragged into a world of power, danger, and people with entirely too many opinions about etiquette and honor. Suddenly, he has an earned brother who knows far too much for the average child, and a barrack full of obnoxious ten year olds. As they grow older, Solomon learns that his brother has many more secrets than he could have anticipated. Like the fact he used to be an immortal engine of destruction, and now, Solomon has to take up his mantle and protect the realm from five other undying beings. All while on the run from one of the most powerful swordsmen who’s ever lived. Which, honestly, feels like a lot of pressure for a boy who used to live in barrels. ———————--------- Character artwork is available on Discord! Come check it out! https://discord.gg/q68P5JPnNz {What to Expect: - I want to make this my most ambitious project yet. I hope the characters come across not only as well-thought-out, but also realistic and likable despite their faults. - All Smut chapters will end with a *. I've gotten some flak for not including enough... *ahem* “lemonade” in my works, so I'll work to find a healthier balance this time around while not cheapening the story. - There are two female leads. No, we're not expanding past those two. Poly. -Milf lovers rejoice. This one goes out to you. -Oh, and also, no NTR or nothin like that. All the homies hate NTR.
AnathaShesha · 354.3k Views

Sold to the Dark Wing

Humans are nothing more than servants in the glittering, cruel society of the winged Seraph. When a human offends them, the punishment is simple: be sold. Evangeline, never thought her own family would betray her. But when her sister committed the unforgivable, offending a seraph, their mother offered Eva in her place- without hesitation. Cast aside like unwanted trash, Eva is paraded before the Seraph nobility to be claimed. No one wants her. Until he appears. The Black Wing. The only Seraph whose feathers are not gold or silver or white, but midnight black. Feared. Cursed. Whispers say every human he has ever taken has perished. And yet, he chooses her. Dragged into his world of shadows, Eva becomes the obsession of a man everyone else fear and despises. He is possessive, merciless, and dangerously seductive. And while her family prays she will be destroyed... Eva begins to wonder if the true danger lies not in his black wings- but in the way her heart betrays her whenever he draws near. Can she ever survive this game of fate? **** The candlelight quivered against the cracked walls of the old inn, shadows twisting like restless spirits. Eva froze as he wasn't suppose to be here! Hades sat in the crimson chair, his presence consuming the air, thick and suffocating, as if the world itself had bowed before him. Swirling the red liquid in his glass, his bright purple eyes never left the shadows, yet he knew she was there before she moved. "Who is it this time?" His voice was a low rasp, curling into the room like smoke, tying her stomach in knots of fear and something darker. Eva forced her pulse to slow, telling herself not to back down. But when his hands rose from the arms of the chair, a shiver ran down her spine. "You aren't supposed to be here," she gasped, as he stood impossibly fast. His black wings unfurled, stretching wide, enveloping her, pressing her to his chest as though he claimed her before she could claim her own breath. "Why?" His lips curled into a wicked, sharp smile. "So I won't discover you running off with that useless boy?" "I didn't—" "Of course, because he's dead." His words cut like a blade, delivered with the certainty of a god reading an open book. Eva stumbled back, pressed to the wall. "You've lost your mind! You didn't kill him—" "Why shouldn't I?" His voice dropped to a growl. A single finger traced the fading red mark on her neck. His eyes snapped with fury; the air itself shivered. He leaned forward, lips brushing her skin, teeth grazing flesh in a possessive bite, erasing another's mark. "He dares," Hades hissed, deadly and low, "he dares touch what belongs to me. A fool. Bold enough to place his lips where mine already mark her." Eva's chest heaved, terror and desire entwined so tightly she could barely breathe. His wings tightened, dark and unyielding, and she realized escape was no longer an option, and perhaps, she didn't even want it. "Don't forget, dear," he murmured, lips grazing her ear, "I've bought you. You're mine now. And I don't like to share."
mata0eve · 238.3k Views