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 5
The next morning, Cato appeared beside the bed with another bowl of porridge. Eve looked at it, then at him, her jaw set in a stubborn line. She wasn't going to make a scene today. She would eat, because she had to. But she wasn't going to like it.
Cato lifted the spoon to her lips. Eve opened her mouth and swallowed. Perhaps it was the tension in her throat, the way her body still rebelled against accepting anything from him—but the thick porridge caught awkwardly, triggering a violent spasm. Immediately, she started coughing. The angle was fine; it was her own resistance that choked her.
The coughing fit was a disaster. Every hack sent shockwaves through her broken ribs and shattered legs. The pain was blinding, stealing her breath. She gasped, her face turning red, then pale, cold sweat breaking out on her forehead.
She glared up at Cato through the tears in her eyes, blaming him entirely for the design of the human esophagus.
Cato set the bowl down on the stool. He stood up, looking down at her for a long moment. Then, without a word of warning, he stepped to the side of the bed and leaned over her.
Eve's heart lurched into her throat. "What are you-"
He slid one arm under her neck and the other under the small of her back, his strength focused in a way that seemed to defy anatomy, completely avoiding the cage of her broken ribs. With a smooth, powerful motion, he hoisted her upper body off the mattress.
"Stop! Let me go!" she yelled, panic making her voice shrill. But her body was useless; she couldn't push him away. His arms were like iron bands, completely immovable, yet somehow avoiding every major injury on her torso.
Instead of propping her against the wall, Cato sat down on the edge of the bed. He shifted her weight, adjusting her body until her back was supported by his solid chest. It wasn't a flush press; he held her with such control that her injured spine and ribs barely made contact, suspended by the strength in his arms and torso. He settled himself against the headboard, creating a living backrest out of his own body.
Eve froze. Every nerve ending in her body fired at once. She was pressed against him. She could feel the hard slabs of muscle beneath his thin shirt, the steady, slow rhythm of his heartbeat against her shoulder blades, and the intense heat radiating from his body. It was like leaning against a furnace.
She could smell him. He didn't smell like the other laborers-no stale sweat or filth. He smelled of pine needles, crushed herbs, and dry wood, mixed with the crisp scent of the outdoors. It was clean. Wild.
A strange shiver ran down her spine, a confusing mix of revulsion and something else she refused to name. She hadn't been this close to another human being in years.
Cato reached for the bowl, his arm brushing against hers as he scooped up the porridge. He brought the spoon to her lips again.
Eve was so stunned by the sheer audacity of the situation that she forgot to argue. She opened her mouth mechanically. The porridge went down much easier this time. The angle was perfect. He held her securely, taking the strain off her neck and ribs.
He fed her in silence, his breathing slow and even. Eve ate, but she couldn't focus on the food. Her entire world had narrowed down to the points of contact between them. The steady thump of his heart against her back was a metronome, slowly syncing with her own frantic pulse.
The heat from his body seeped into her aching muscles, loosening the knots of tension she hadn't even realized she was carrying. The constant, deep chill that had lived in her bones since the Frostbound Abyss began to thaw.
When the bowl was empty, Cato set it aside. Eve braced herself for him to push her back onto the mattress, but he didn't. He just sat there, holding her against his chest in the quiet room.
The exhaustion she had been fighting for days crashed over her like a wave. The pain was still there, but it was muffled, wrapped in a cocoon of warmth and the steady rhythm of his breathing. She didn't feel safe-the very idea was ludicrous. But her body, a traitorous vessel of meat and bone, recognized a source of immense, unshakeable stability. It was not safety, but a forced calm, like a wild animal cornered by a creature so powerful it knows struggling is futile. Her mind was still screaming alarms, but her body had already surrendered to the overwhelming physical reality of his presence.
She tried to summon the energy to struggle, to tell him to let her go, but her limbs felt like they were filled with lead. Her eyelids drooped.
Don't fall asleep, she ordered herself. Don't let your guard down.
But his heartbeat was a lullaby she couldn't ignore. Her eyes drifted shut, and she slipped into a deep, dreamless sleep, cradled against the chest of the silent laborer.
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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.