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The Villain's Retirement

Hello, I live in the Demon Continent. The land of ash skies, endless night, and the towering citadel where the Demon King lives and rules over everything and everybody. No one dares speaks back to him. And yet, lately, the humans, guided by their fickle gods and led by their so-called heroes have started to win for some inexplicable reason. But honestly? I couldn't care less. “Every day is so boring,” I muttered as I watched their armies breach our borders. “I feel indifferent about everything. Isn’t there anything that could make life even slightly entertaining?” From the highest balcony of the Demon King’s castle, with the smoke of war curling up toward me, the demon castle rumbled as the gates were finally breached and the fight of the heroes against the Demon King has began. While that was happening, I entertained these thoughts without urgency, without fear, just mild curiosity. Who am I, you ask? I am not the Demon King. I am not his right hand, nor his left. But if one were to rank us, I would be the second-strongest existence in this land. In a story, I suppose I would be the “Hidden Boss.” The truth is, I don’t care about the demon king and the hero's party. Unlike the Demon King, I feel nothing for this world, no loyalty, no greed for conquest or power. Unlike the Hero, I do not understand what he was fighting for. If anything, I just feel tired. I do not feel any purpose. I don’t know why I even exist. I look from the veranda and watch. Before me, I cannot see nothing but the barren lands and the dark forests of the Demon Continent. I try to remember the color in the human realm. I miss it. If there was anything I wanted to do, that was only to live in peace in the human realm. Should I kill the Demon King and leave? …Tempting, but unrealistic. He’d annihilate me before I even got the chance. So I sigh, and I wait, and I watch. Then, in a twist no demon had expected, the hero's party defeated the Demon King. Just like that, a thousand years of war ended—and the world entered an era of “peace”. And so, with nothing left to tie me here, I left. Retired from demon life.
Main_Island · 840 Views

DON'T DREAM

When the senior class of Greystone High arrives at the infamous **Noctis Facility**—a government-confiscated building rumored to have been a secret human test lab—the trip feels like a bad joke wrapped in urban legend. The halls are gutted, windows sealed, and the air smells like chemicals and old nightmares. Their guide’s information is vague, the teachers are uneasy, and the security presence is unnervingly heavy for a building that’s “no longer active.” Among the students is **AYLA**, a quiet, insomnia-ridden perfectionist who hasn’t slept properly in years; **KAI**, her adrenaline-seeking best friend; **MIRA**, a top student hiding crippling anxiety; and **JASON**, a skeptic who lives to debunk anything “paranormal.” Each of them carries a private fear they don’t talk about—but in Noctis, fear is the only language that matters. During the tour, the class is ushered into a central research wing: a circular chamber lined with dormant machinery and strange reclined chairs, each fitted with a helmet-like device. A broken sign hints at the lab’s original purpose: **“Oneiric Response Modulation – DREAMLESS PROJECT.”** Before anyone can process the meaning, the security doors lock. Alarms moan to life. Sleep-inducing gas seeps from vents. Their phones die at once. The teachers collapse. One by one, the students lose consciousness. They wake up hours later, apparently unharmed, still inside the chamber. The gas is gone. The doors are open. But something has changed. That night, back in their dorm-style accommodations near the facility, the first death happens. A student who had laughed the loudest at the urban legends **falls asleep and never wakes up**, found in his bed twisted, broken, as if thrown from a ten-story building—though the room is perfectly intact. Security footage shows him lying still. No intruder. No struggle. No logical cause. Then another student dies, this time appearing to have drowned—lungs filled with water, though she’s found in a perfectly dry room. Rumors race through the survivors: They died from **what happened in their dreams**. A recorded message triggers on their confiscated phones and in loudspeakers back at the facility, a distorted voice from the Noctis system: > “Welcome to the DREAMLESS PROTOCOL. > Rule One: **Sleep is permitted.** > Rule Two: **Dreaming is not.** > If your brain enters REM sleep, your death in the dream will be mirrored in your reality. > This is a controlled test. > Survive—or be deleted.” The impossible catch: **no human can decide not to dream**. The students’ biology is now their executioner. Every blink feels dangerous, every yawn a countdown. Ayla, who has long feared sleep, becomes an unlikely focal point; her chronic insomnia might be their only starting advantage. She realizes the lab has wiped their devices, cut them off from the outside, and manipulated their sleep cycles. They are not on a school trip anymore—they are **subjects in a game-like human trial** where the enemy is inside their own heads.
Huddon1S_Lajah · 437 Views

Bound by Dragonfire, Crowned by Fate: A Slum Girl's Forbidden Contract

Little thief, you called me." You'll pay for it with your soul now." Serina is a slum rat with almost no magical power in a world where magical rank is everything. She is watching her little brother die from a curse that no doctor can fix. She breaks into the banned Dragon's Shrine to ask for a miracle because she is desperate and has no other choice. She wakes him up instead. It was said that a legendary beast named Kaelion almost destroyed the land a thousand years ago. The monster that every kid dreams about. Serina now shares her life force with the most dangerous being in the world because of an old blood contract she accidentally set off. But the dragon that appears in front of her is not the dumb monster from the stories. He's devastatingly beautiful, infuriatingly arrogant, and hiding secrets that could shatter everything she knows about magic, power, and her own impossible family. As the contract forces them into an intimate bond, Serina discovers three terrifying truths: the magical elite who rule her world built their empire on lies and dragon blood; her "worthless" magic is actually a forbidden power they've been hunting for generations; and Kaelion isn't the villain of the story—he's been the prisoner all along. Serina has to make a terrible choice when the Grand Magister who cursed her brother comes to take her head and the dragon she's tied to. She can either stay the helpless nobody she's always been, or she can accept the terrible truth of what she is. The slums taught her to live. The dragon will teach her to burn the world down and rise from the ashes.
zayndeen001 · 4.4k Views