The Unwanted Genius Escapes Her Dark Fate
Seraphina was the greatest mage of her generation. Then she saw her future: betrayed, broken, and left for dead.
She woke up with a new plan: do absolutely nothing.
Trip on flat floors. Cry magical floods. Tell professors her only goal is "three meals and eight hours of sleep."
Let Elara steal her glory. Let the system target someone else. She just wants to nap.
But no one will let her fail.
The strictest professor calls her breakdown "enlightenment." The potion genius turns her scribbles into "divine wisdom." The more she acts like trash, the more they worship her.
She didn't choose to be a legend.
She chose to be useless.
Why is that so hard?
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Chapter 5
The question hung in the air, heavy and suffocating.
The first-years held their breath. This was the ultimate philosophical test of the Aetheria Academy. It was a question given to graduating seniors. The standard, expected answer was always about sacrifice, honor, and guarding the weak.
Elara, having dried her robes with a quick spell, sat up straight. She mentally pulled up her system's database, ready to recite the perfect, heroic answer if Seraphina failed.
All eyes were glued to the back row.
Seraphina scratched the back of her head. She let out a long, loud yawn that forced her eyes to water. She didn't stand at attention. She leaned her hip against the desk and crossed her arms.
"The highest truth?" Seraphina asked. Her voice was lazy, like she was discussing the weather. "The highest truth is that I really, really don't want to be a mage."
The silence in the room became absolute. A few students dropped their quills.
Silas's eyebrows pulled together, creating a deep crease in his forehead. He didn't yell. He just stared. "Continue."
Seraphina shrugged. "As for responsibility... I'm exhausted. My only responsibility right now is making sure I eat three meals a day and get eight hours of sleep."
Elara smirked behind her hand. Seraphina was digging her own grave. Silas was going to expel her for this disrespect.
Seraphina looked up at the ceiling, her eyes entirely devoid of ambition. She delivered the final blow.
"If I have to hope for anything," she said slowly, "I just hope that when danger comes, someone else will step up to save me. I don't want to be the shield anymore. I want to hide behind someone else."
The classroom erupted.
"Coward!" a hot-headed boy from the combat faction yelled, jumping to his feet. "You don't deserve your magic!"
"You're a disgrace to the Vanguard name!" another girl shouted.
Seraphina didn't flinch. She didn't argue. Instead, she nodded vigorously.
"Yes!" Seraphina pointed at the angry boy. "Exactly! You are one hundred percent right. I am a coward. You guys are so brave, you should definitely take the front lines. I'll cheer for you from the back."
The boy's face turned bright red. He opened his mouth to yell again, but the words choked in his throat. It was like punching a cloud. Her total, enthusiastic agreement completely neutralized his anger.
Silas watched her. He looked for a smirk. He looked for a sign of mockery.
He found nothing. Seraphina's eyes were clear, calm, and completely empty of the desperate need for validation that plagued every other student in this academy.
Silas's breath hitched. He had seen prodigies burn themselves alive chasing power. He had seen students go mad from the pressure of honor. But this girl... she had let it all go. She had stripped away the ego, the pride, the vanity of magic, leaving only the raw, unadorned truth of human frailty.
This wasn't cowardice, he realized with a sudden, profound clarity. It was the shedding of ego. To so calmly admit weakness... she had taken the first, most difficult step on a path few mages ever find. The path beyond power. She had reached the state of Void.
A low, rumbling chuckle vibrated in Silas's chest. The sound shocked the students into silence.
Silas waved his hand, forcing the standing students to sit down.
"To face one's own weakness without shame," Silas announced, his voice ringing with profound respect. "To strip away the illusion of invincibility. That is the first true step to mastering the soul."
He looked at Seraphina. "You pass, Seraphina. With top marks."
Elara's jaw unhinged. She stared at Silas as if he had grown a second head. Her system panel flashed a warning: Influence over Silas Vane decreasing.
Seraphina blinked. She looked at the strict, terrifying professor. Did this old man really just brainwash himself into thinking I'm a philosopher?
She didn't care. A pass was a pass.
The bell rang, a sharp, metallic clang that signaled the end of the period.
"Class dismissed," Silas said. He gave Seraphina one last, deeply respectful nod before sweeping out of the room.
The first-years packed their bags slowly. The glares they shot at Seraphina were gone. Now, they looked at her with a bizarre mix of confusion and deep, probing curiosity.
Seraphina stretched her arms over her head, grabbed her empty water bottle, and strolled toward the door. It was time for lunch.
Elara watched her go. Her chest heaved with suppressed rage. Seraphina was immune to her tricks. She needed a new target. Someone powerful enough to crush Seraphina for her.
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7.1
I was the top commander of a black-ops military program. After slaughtering my way through a hellish mission, I reached the extraction helicopter, trusting my second-in-command to watch my back.
But the moment our hands locked, he didn't pull me up. Instead, he plunged a syringe of lethal neurotoxin directly into my neck.
He aimed his gun at my chest, coldly stating that I was too dangerous to live. My lungs stopped, and I died in a pool of my own blood. But the endless blackness suddenly shattered. My consciousness violently forced its way into a new, broken shell. I woke up in a freezing alley, soaked in muddy rain.
This body belonged to seventeen-year-old Eliza Wyatt. A massive wave of foreign memories crashed into my brain. Her own younger sister had just stood at the top of the stairs with a mocking smile, watching street thugs beat Eliza to death.
"Take good care of the Wyatt family's eldest daughter. Tonight is the night she finally disappears."
The endless humiliation, the cold stares of her family, and the brutal betrayal by her own blood flashed before my eyes. Why was this fragile girl treated like garbage and pushed to her death by the very people who should have protected her?
I looked down at my pale, trembling hands. The top commander was dead, but in this bleeding shell, Eliza Wyatt was very much alive. I picked up a switchblade from the bloody puddle and stood up in the storm. It was time to hunt.
9.7
Elara Voss was rejected by her Alpha on the night of the Blood Moon - cast aside as a nobody with no wolf, no rank, and no future. She ran. But fate had other plans.
In the human world, she collides with Damien Crest - cold, ruthless billionaire by day, the last living Shadowking by night. He offers her a contract marriage. She has nowhere else to go.
But ancient markings are awakening on her skin. A god is whispering her name. And Kael, the fearsome Werewolf High King, has declared across all supernatural realms that she is his fated mate.
Two kings. Two worlds. One woman who was never supposed to matter.
They all rejected her once. Now they'll burn their empires down to claim her.
7.6
He hated my gut!
I detested his arrogance!
I was supposed to be his ex-stepmother,but I hated pack politics and returned to the human community after Alpha Holt's death.
I was forced back to heal the wounds of the one that hated me the most, my stepson Adrian.
To the world he was the famous NHL golden boy of hockey and to the Frostfang pack, their feared Alpha.
But the moon goddess had another plan.
On the night he was crowned as Alpha, his father's mark faded from my neck and Adrian's mate bond burnt harshly on my skin. But fate wasn't done yet.
We were expected to team up to fight a common foe when we could barely stand each other.
Was our fate strong enough to overcome physical hatred?
8.8
Alaia Dudley spent her life playing the devoted partner, completely unaware that her fiancé Austen was sleeping with another woman.
She thought the worst he could do was break her heart, until she found herself pinned to a cold operating table.
Austen held her down with a cruel smirk while a scalpel sliced through her sternum.
They cracked her chest open while she was still fully conscious.
The agonizing pain of her heart being cut out burned into her nerve endings.
She realized then that to him, she was never a lover—just a spare organ, a boring piece of wood to be discarded the second his true love needed it.
She died in excruciating agony, choking on her own blood while the man she loved walked away with her heart.
Until her last breath, she didn't understand why she had to suffer so brutally.
Why did she waste her life begging for a monster's attention? Why did they get a happy ending while she was carved up like an animal?
But then, ice-cold water flooded her lungs, and Alaia violently broke the surface of her bathwater.
Her trembling fingers touched her smooth, flawless chest. No scars. Her heart was still beating.
The date on her phone glared back at her: it was exactly five years ago.
Tonight was the exact night Austen first took his mistress to a hotel room.
This time, she wouldn't just expose them. She would use Wall Street's most terrifying tyrant as her personal weapon to strip them of everything they had.
7.9
Cora Foster was a brilliant archaeologist, but a jagged burn scar across her face made the world treat her like a contagious monster.
During an elite excavation of a Gilded Age crypt, touching an ancient artifact triggered a terrifying memory. She remembered being Seraphina Beaumont, a socialite brutally buried alive by her vain, cruel sister, Isolde.
When the team pried open the crypt's pristine mahogany casket, they cheered, believing the mummified corpse inside was Seraphina. But Cora recognized the onyx hairpin and the angular jawline. It was Isolde. The sister who had stolen her life, mocked her agony, and left her to suffocate in the dark. Her colleagues scoffed at her forensic proof, dismissing her as a scarred, delusional liability.
Worse, the ruthless billionaire funding the expedition, Julian Montgomery, was the spitting image of Alistair—the man Seraphina had deeply loved. Why was Julian staring at her ruined face with such intense, inexplicable recognition? And why did Isolde take Seraphina's most precious silver ring to the grave?
Driven by a century of agonizing grief, Cora secretly pried the tarnished ring from the mummy's stiff, dead fingers and dropped it into her pocket.
"What are you looking at, Foster?"
Julian's deep voice vibrated inches from her ear, his cold, predatory eyes locked directly onto her half-open pocket.
8.0
Eloise Ferguson was the legitimate daughter of a powerful Senator, yet she was treated like a hysterical burden by her own family.
In her past life, her parents forced her to marry a sadistic billionaire for political funding.
When she resisted, they locked her in a psychiatric facility, drugged her, and left her to die in restraints while her "fragile" cousin Jaylene stole her life.
She never understood why her mother hated her so fiercely.
Why did her mother treat her brother Cortez and her cousin Jaylene like absolute royalty, while throwing her own flesh and blood to the wolves?
Opening her eyes again, Eloise found herself back at age twenty-two, trapped in a restroom at a charity gala.
Escaping her abuser, she used her awakened mystic abilities to look at her family's life forces.
What she saw made her blood run cold.
Thick, red biological cords connected her mother directly to both Cortez and Jaylene, intertwining in a perfect symbiotic bond.
They weren't cousins. They were illegitimate twins born from her mother's secret affair.
Eloise was the only true outsider in her own home.
The realization hit her like a physical blow. Her entire life of abuse was just a cover-up for a nest of parasites stealing her father's name and her inheritance.
But this time, she refused to be their victim.
Armed with an unchallengeable executive order she blackmailed out of the United States President, Eloise crushed the hidden microphone in her bedroom.
"Game on, Mother."