Bound To The Silent Laborer's Bed
I was the youngest Paladin in history, the absolute pride of the Azure Blade.
But after a disastrous mission in the snow, I was falsely accused of slaughtering my own squad.
Grand Master Bernardo Rowe didn't just exile me; he surgically severed my connection to the magic Aether, turning me into a crippled mortal.
Desperate to survive, I tried to climb the Holy Stairs to reclaim my legendary sword, "Rebellion."
Instead of answering my call, my own blade shrieked in absolute rejection and blasted me down the thousand stone steps.
My bones snapped like dry twigs, and I was left in a pool of my own blood.
The pilgrims laughed at me. The guards declared me a lost cause and left me to rot in the dirt.
I should have died there, betrayed by the Order and the holy magic I once served.
But a silent, massive laborer named Cato Sims dragged my mangled body into the shadows.
He healed my shattered skeleton in mere days with impossible skill, yet he allowed lowly servants to spit on him and beat him just to keep my presence hidden.
I didn't understand why my holy sword had abandoned me, and I understood even less why this stranger was protecting a condemned criminal.
When I finally snapped and demanded to know his price for saving my life, he didn't ask for money or my body.
"The mountain does not forget its debts. I am reclaiming what was taken from it."
Staring into his unyielding eyes, I realized my exile wasn't the end, but the beginning of a terrifying truth.
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Chapter 3
Pain. That was the first thing that dragged Eve back from the dark. A heavy, throbbing ache that seemed to pulse in time with her heartbeat, radiating from every corner of her body.
She forced her eyes open. The light was dim, filtering through gaps in a rotting wooden roof. The air smelled of crushed herbs, dry dirt, and old smoke. She tried to shift her leg, but a stiff resistance stopped her. She looked down. Her limbs were tightly bound with rough wooden splints and strips of torn cloth. She was completely immobilized.
A low, rhythmic scraping sound came from across the room. A broad back was turned to her, hunched over a wooden table. The man was grinding something in a stone mortar, the muscles in his arms shifting under the rough fabric of his shirt.
She recognized that back. The silent watcher from the stairs. Cato Sims.
The memories crashed over her-the climb, the shockwave, the bone-snapping fall. She should be dead. The realization settled in her stomach like a block of ice.
"Did you save me?" she croaked. Her voice sounded like gravel scraping against sandpaper.
The grinding stopped. Cato turned around. His face was the same as it had been at the stairs-blank, calm, utterly unreadable. He didn't answer. He picked up a chipped clay bowl filled with water and walked over to the bed. He dipped a crude wooden spoon into the water and brought it to her cracked lips.
Eve's instinct screamed at her to turn away. She didn't know this man. She didn't know what he wanted. But the raw, burning thirst in her throat overrode her pride. She parted her lips, letting the cool water trickle inside. It soothed the fire in her throat just enough to let her think clearly.
She studied him as he pulled the spoon back. He looked young, maybe in his early twenties, but his eyes held a stillness that belonged to someone who had seen centuries of silence.
"Why?" she demanded, her voice gaining a fraction of strength.
Cato didn't speak. He simply turned his back on her again and resumed grinding the herbs.
His dismissal ignited a spark of fury in her chest. She tried to reach for the Aether inside her, desperate to feel some semblance of control, some spark of her former power. She searched the void in her chest. Nothing. Just a dead, empty space where her magic used to burn. The Order hadn't just exiled her; they had surgically removed her soul.
The despair hit her like a physical blow, triggering a cascade of fragmented memories. The trial room. The cold stone floors. The sneering faces of her former comrades.
Flashback: Grand Master Bernardo Rowe sat high on the judgment seat, his face carved from marble. "Eve Salazar, your arrogance led to the slaughter of your squad. You hoarded the Iceborn Heart for yourself."
Flashback: She had screamed her innocence until her throat bled, but when she tried to explain what happened in the snow, her mind hit a blank wall. She couldn't remember. She only remembered the endless white, the sudden spray of blood across the snow, and a cold, stabbing pain in her chest.
Flashback: Bernardo raised his hand, severing her connection to the Aether forever. "You are cast out."
Eve gasped, her chest heaving as the memory released her. The sudden movement sent a bolt of white-hot agony through her broken ribs. She squeezed her eyes shut, a low groan escaping her lips.
Cato was beside her in an instant. He dropped the pestle and reached out, his hand moving toward her shoulder to check her bindings.
"Don't touch me!" she snapped, her voice raw and trembling.
His hand froze in mid-air. He held it there for a second, then slowly retracted it, his expression unchanged. He turned away, opened a rickety cabinet, and pulled out a relatively clean strip of cloth. He soaked it in the cool water from the bowl and leaned over her again.
This time, he didn't reach for her body. He gently placed the damp cloth across her fevered forehead.
The cold seeped into her skin, cutting through the chaos in her mind. She stared up at him, her breath coming in short, angry pants. She was entirely at his mercy. A prisoner in the home of a man she didn't know, who wouldn't even speak to her.
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9.3
Halie woke up to a sharp pain and a terrifying reality. She was in a new body, her face covered in a hideous web of scars, and her spiritual power reduced to a pathetic D-Class.
Before she could even process the memories of being framed, her bedroom doors were violently kicked open.
Her sister Seraphina sauntered in with a venomous sneer, followed closely by Halie's S-Class fiancé, Jett.
"Look at the disgrace of the Avila family. What a waste," Seraphina mocked, throwing a mirror at her bed.
"I can't be tied to a cripple. As an S-Class, I have to break our engagement," Jett added, his gaze full of disgust.
The nightmare didn't stop there. Her father called, screaming about how she had shamed the family name. He officially stripped her of her inheritance, froze all her accounts, and exiled her to the decaying Southern District to rot.
To make matters worse, a cold, mechanical voice suddenly echoed in her skull, warning her of an impending genetic collapse. Without an immediate energy infusion, she would face total organ failure in thirty days.
A ruined face, a treacherous family, a world that wanted her dead, and a literal death clock ticking in her brain. The original owner had died in absolute despair, a tragic victim of sheer cruelty.
But if they thought she would just sit there and die, they were severely mistaken.
Armed with a mysterious system and her brilliant scientist mind from her past life, Halie packed her bags. She chose the craziest survival quest: head to the slums, find the exiled, sterile S-Class "madman" Coleman, and cure him to harvest his life energy. It was time to start her counterattack.
7.8
Elie Joyce’s entire life was controlled by Ebert Ewing, a ruthless billionaire who held her sick grandmother's survival and her family's freedom in his hands.
But on a freezing, stormy night, he forced her into a scandalous scrap of red silk and handed her over to a notorious, disgusting predator.
"You aren't an escort. You're just a free gift."
Ebert mocked her, using her as a disposable bargaining chip to secure a corporate funding round.
When the predator humiliated her, forced high-proof vodka down her throat, and violently pinned her to the floor, Ebert simply watched with dead eyes.
And when Ebert finally intervened to brutally beat the man, it wasn't out of mercy.
"She is my property. Even if she is trash that I threw away, a filthy pig like you doesn't get to touch her."
Afterward, he dragged her battered, barefoot body into his car, only to kick her out into the torrential rain, leaving her on the dark streets to die.
Standing in the storm, shivering and bleeding from broken glass, the last shred of Elie's hope shattered.
She had sacrificed her dignity and soul, enduring his violent bites and cruel control, just to keep her family alive.
Why did she have to suffer this endless, twisted humiliation for a psychopath who only saw her as trash?
But she didn't break.
Tearing a strip of his expensive shirt to bandage her bleeding foot, Elie gripped her broken stiletto like a knife.
With her eyes turning cold and calculating, she limped out of the shadows.
She was going to survive, and Ebert Ewing would soon realize she was no longer his obedient prey.
8.3
EDEN
8.3
Elianila, an AI Architect, is part of an elite team tasked with designing a global system meant to prevent threats, manage disasters, and distribute resources to vulnerable regions. After five years of tireless work with her colleagues, she uncovers disturbing anomalies, code-named, X-variables, that flag individuals according to criteria she never programmed.
As Elianila digs deeper to understand what the X-variables measure and where their origin, she finds herself in direct conflict with the authorities. Soon, the System marks her and her daughter as threats - targets to be eliminated.
With a small band of colleagues and dissidents, Elianila goes on the run, hiding in places beyond the Systems reach. As they evade surveillance, they race against time to warn others, expose the truth, and fight back against the omnipresent authority of the System.
8.7
For eighteen years, I lived as the lowest Omega in the Silver Moon Pack, surviving only because Alpha Gideon took me under his wing.
But the moment his coffin was lowered into the ground, his wife and the new Alpha son immediately turned on me.
"Her presence has brought a curse upon us!"
Luna Lyra pointed a trembling finger at me in the freezing rain, blaming me for Gideon's sudden death.
She stripped me of my pack ties and permanently exiled me into the deadly wilderness with nothing but a wooden toy.
The entire pack watched with cold contempt as I was thrown out like garbage.
To make matters worse, the new Alpha later hunted me down in the woods, threatening to kill me just to steal the only thing Gideon had secretly left behind for me—an ancient, unreadable book.
I didn't understand why they hated me so deeply, or what terrifying secret this blank book held that made my own pack want me dead.
But the moment my foot crossed the pack boundary, an ancient, immense power I never knew I had snapped free inside my veins.
I was no longer their weak Omega.
And when I escaped deeper into the forest and crashed straight into the arms of a wounded Rogue, my destiny completely rewrote itself.
Because he wasn't just a Rogue, but the legendary Northern Alpha King.
And as his glowing golden eyes locked onto mine, our inner wolves roared the exact same word:
"Mate!"
9.5
He was born from the void between stars - a being of immense power, forged from cosmic origins.
For thousands of years, he walked among humanity, protecting them and keeping his true strength hidden. After losing the only family he had, grief led him to seek his own end... only to wake up in a world entirely unlike his own.
Here, cultivation is the main path to power. Those who master spirit qi gain superhuman strength, speed, and abilities that place them far above ordinary people. Four great sects rule the land, competing for resources, secrets, and dominance over each other.
Icaros joined the Li Sect, where he found companions he came to trust and care for: the capable and easygoing Li Han, the sharp and composed Su Yan, and the spirited Nelly. For a time, he felt he had found a place to belong, even as he kept his true nature hidden and wondered whether he could ever learn to cultivate like those around him.
Everything changed when their voyage was suddenly attacked. A powerful figure floating in the sky cut their ship apart with sharp, devastating energy strikes, leaving only destruction in his wake. Believing his friends had been lost in the disaster, Icaros chose to stop holding back any longer.
> "I am done hiding!"
He unleashed his full power: golden light blazed from his eyes, he flew at incredible speed, and he broke through every barrier and enemy in his way. On the shores ahead, he tore through hordes of powerful jade monsters, destroying them completely before flying deep into the interior of the island.
Meanwhile, survivors washed up scattered and alone. One young cultivator found himself on the shores of Jade Island - a place most cultivators avoid, as it holds no treasures or useful materials, only danger and endless deposits of ordinary jade. Yet despite the risks, ordinary people have built settlements here, finding safety from the conflicts and power struggles of the outside world.
This island works by different rules. Spirit qi is scarce and unstable, making cultivation far less effective than elsewhere. Instead, the people here rely on advanced technology - weapons and explosives that can injure or even defeat those with great physical strength. Here, skill and preparation can be just as powerful as raw strength, and even the strongest cultivators must move with caution.
Now, Icaros has vanished deep into the island. His companions are lost somewhere across this dangerous land. And the mysterious swordsman who destroyed their ship has already arrived here, searching for an ancient map said to lead to the legacy of a being from another world.
Will they find each other again? And can anyone survive in a place where the usual rules of power no longer hold true?
✅ Chapters 1–19: FREE
🔒 Chapters 20 onwards: PAID
(Continue the journey of power, friendship, and discovery!)
8.0
Twenty-one-year-old Hazel has always lived in a safe, comfortable bubble, meticulously guarded by her fiercely protective older brother. Her life is predictable, quiet, and perfectly ordinary. Until he steps into it.
Silas is twenty-four, dangerously captivating, and her brother's best friend. He brings with him an aura of dark secrets, ink-stained skin, and a predatory gaze that strips away all her carefully built defenses. He is everything she has been taught to avoid, yet living under the same roof makes him impossible to escape.
What starts as a temporary living arrangement quickly spirals into a suffocating web of stolen glances, unspoken desires, and a dangerous obsession. Silas isn't just looking for a place to crash; he's looking at her. And once he pins her in his sights, the thorns of their forbidden attraction will bind them together in ways that could destroy them both.
In a house where walls have ears and her brother is always watching, giving in to the madness is a risk. But Silas is a temptation she might not survive.