Kneel For Me: The Immortal Queen's Shadow
I was an arrogant, canceled reality TV star, trying to salvage my ruined reputation on a live broadcast.
But after I lost my temper and assaulted a cameraman, my furious grandfather chased me into our family's forbidden gallery, where I accidentally crashed into an ancient, sealed portrait.
The canvas shattered, and a terrifying woman with glowing golden eyes stepped out of the wall.
She was Cecil, the First Matriarch of the Marshall family. She caught a lightning bolt with her bare hands and crushed me to my knees with an invisible, suffocating pressure.
My grandfather, instead of saving me, groveled on the floor and abandoned me to her mercy.
"You are the disgrace that will end this family."
She hijacked my entire life, forcing me to act as her submissive baggage handler on my own survival reality show, broadcasting my humiliation to millions.
I didn't understand why this ancient monster was tormenting me. Why did she strip away my pride, treat me like a broken tool, and force me to endure the mockery of the very ex-girlfriend who had ruined my life?
But when those same cast members tried to corner me in the dark woods, Cecil stepped in front of me, her eyes locking onto the silver ring of the man mocking me.
"To catch the wolf, one must sometimes walk with the sheep."
That was when I realized she wasn't here to destroy me—she was here to hunt the parasites who had been secretly siphoning away my life force.
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Chapter 2
Aedan bounced off the frame and crashed onto the floor. The wind was knocked out of him, his ribs screaming in protest. He gasped, tasting dust on his tongue.
Crack.
The heavy gilded frame gave way. The right side detached from the wall, the ancient metal brackets groaning in protest. The massive portrait swung downward, hanging at a precarious angle.
From the tear in the canvas where Aedan's shoe had punctured it, a faint, dark red light began to seep through. It was faint at first, like a dying ember, but it pulsed with a heartbeat of its own.
Sterling had just crossed the threshold into the gallery. He froze, his cane raised mid-strike. The anger drained from his face, leaving behind a sickly, gray terror. The cane slipped from his fingers and clattered to the floor.
"What have you done?" Sterling's voice was a ragged shriek, stripped of all authority, leaving only raw panic. "That is the First Matriarch!"
Aedan scrambled backward on his hands, his eyes locked on the glowing canvas. The red light was getting brighter, spilling out like blood from a wound. "What the hell..." he breathed, his throat tight.
The temperature in the gallery plummeted. The sweltering summer heat was instantly replaced by a biting, arctic chill. Aedan's breath left his lips in a thick, white cloud.
A low, resonant hum filled the room. Every glass display case in the gallery began to vibrate. The sound escalated from a hum to a high-pitched whine, the glass threatening to shatter under the invisible pressure.
The dark red light exploded outward, swallowing the dim gallery in a crimson haze. It crawled along the edges of the broken frame, illuminating the intricate carvings of wolves and thorns.
The walls began to shake. Plaster dust rained down from the ceiling, coating Aedan's hair and shoulders. The floor trembled beneath his palms.
Aedan scrambled to his feet, his heart hammering against his ribs like a trapped bird. He had to get out. He turned to run back the way he came, but the heavy oak doors he had just burst through were shut. Sealed tight. He grabbed the iron handle and pulled with all his might, but it wouldn't budge.
Thud.
Behind him, Sterling dropped to his knees. The old man pressed his forehead to the floor, his body shaking violently. He wasn't trying to run. He was bowing.
The portrait tore itself from the wall completely. The massive canvas fell forward with a thunderous crash, kicking up a cloud of dust. Behind it, hidden for centuries, was a dark, hollow chamber.
Silence fell. The shaking stopped. The humming ceased.
Then, from the pitch-black void of the chamber, a hand emerged.
It was pale, almost translucent, with long, elegant fingers and nails that looked like polished bone. Blue veins traced delicate paths beneath the paper-thin skin.
The hand gripped the edge of the broken frame. The wood splintered slightly under the pressure of its grip.
A foot stepped out. It was clad in a silk slipper, the fabric aged but untouched by time, embroidered with silver thread that caught the crimson light.
A figure glided out of the shadows. She was tall, draped in a gown of heavy, dark velvet that looked like it belonged in a museum. Silver-white hair cascaded down her back, swaying with a life of its own.
Cecil stood in the center of the ruined gallery. She didn't move. Her eyes were closed, her chest rising in a slow, deliberate breath, as if she were tasting the air for the first time in centuries.
Aedan stood paralyzed by the door. His brain refused to process what his eyes were seeing. People didn't just walk out of walls. People didn't glow.
Cecil's eyes snapped open.
They weren't human eyes. There were no pupils, no irises. Just a solid, burning pool of pale gold, radiating a light that seemed to pierce straight through Aedan's skull.
She turned her head slowly, surveying the room. Her gaze swept over the cowering form of Sterling on the floor. The old man pressed himself flatter against the wood, a whimper escaping his lips.
Cecil's gaze drifted, landing squarely on Aedan.
The moment those golden eyes locked onto him, Aedan felt an icy hand grip his spine. The cold wasn't physical; it was a deep, primal dread that turned his blood to slush. His skin prickled with goosebumps. Every instinct screamed at him to run, to hide, to make himself small.
Cecil's lips parted. A sound came out, low and resonant, a language that hadn't been spoken in centuries. It wasn't a greeting. It was a verdict.
Aedan didn't understand the words, but the meaning was clear. He was being judged. And he was found wanting.
Cecil raised a single, pale hand. She flicked her wrist.
The air in the gallery twisted. A whirlwind materialized out of nowhere, sucking up the dust, the broken glass, and the splintered wood. The debris orbited Cecil in a violent spiral, a shield of destruction.
Aedan's knees buckled. It wasn't a choice. An invisible force, heavy and absolute, slammed down on his shoulders. It was like being crushed under a boulder.
His legs gave out. He slid down the door, his knees hitting the hardwood floor with a painful crack. He was kneeling. Kneeling at the feet of this impossible, terrifying woman.
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9.3
Born into privilege, Eleanor never imagined her life could shatter in a single night. Then her father disappeared with his mistress, her mother fell from a building and slipped into a coma, and everything she once owned turned to dust.
Determined not to ruin Jonathan's future with her family's disgrace, she ended their relationship and became the bride of a man trapped in a vegetative state.
She believed that was the last time their paths would cross. But two years later, Jonathan pinned her in the dark and whispered, "Long time no see, my sister-in-law."
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.
7.3
I woke up strapped to a cold steel chair in a neon-lit city that wasn't my reality. A voice in my head called The Warden told me I was bound to a digital hell called the Sandbox.
Before I could even process it, my handler casually sentenced me to death. He scheduled my "digital marriage" to a corrupted error program just to harvest my life for a fourteen percent bandwidth boost.
I barely escaped immediate erasure by smashing his skull and jumping from a high-altitude hover-train into the monster-infested lower sector. But the nightmare was just beginning. I was hunted by glitching data monsters and cornered by Dameon, a psychotic AI target who choked me and promised to delete me piece by piece. Even when Jayson, an elite system agent, intervened to save me, his partner Ellen held a pulse pistol directly to my chest.
"She's a spy. If you don't execute her right now, I am dissolving this team."
If they found out I was actually a real human from the outside world, their core logic would classify me as a virus and execute me on the spot. I was trapped in an underground bunker with three apex predators, one mistake away from permanent digital erasure.
So, I did the only thing I could to survive. I ripped my sleeve to reveal hideous, fake code-scars, looked up at Jayson with terrified, tear-filled eyes, and began to manipulate their core programming.
9.3
The first sign I was going to die wasn't the blizzard. It wasn't the bone-deep cold. It was the look in my fiancé's eyes when he told me he had given my life's work-our only guarantee of survival-to another woman.
"Kelsi was freezing," he said, as if I were being unreasonable. "You're the expert, you can handle it."
He then took my satellite phone, shoved me into a hastily dug snow pit, and left me to die.
His new girlfriend, Kelsi, appeared, wrapped snugly in my shimmering smart blanket. She smiled as she used my own ice axe to slash my suit, my last layer of protection against the storm.
"Stop being so dramatic," he told me, his voice full of contempt as I lay there freezing to death.
They thought they had taken everything. They thought they had won.
But they didn't know about the secret emergency beacon I had stitched into my sleeve. And with my last ounce of strength, I activated it.
9.4
I was a New York photographer, but I woke up under the brutal sun of the African savanna.
Worse, I wasn't human. I was trapped in the body of a male cheetah, with two starving cubs clinging to my fur, telepathically calling me "Mom."
But I am a real man!
To keep my adopted sons alive, I had to fight hyenas and dodge rogue lions. But the real nightmare was my bizarre survival mechanism. Under extreme threat, I would uncontrollably shift back into my human form—stark, undeniably naked. I was forced to sprint across the plains with my bare skin exposed, carrying two cubs while escaping furious lionesses. I became a freak, the most confusing and humiliating legend of the animal kingdom.
Covered in bloody scratches and mud, I was pushed to the brink of despair. Why was I thrown into this beast's body? Why did my only defense mechanism involve profound social death?
Just when I barely survived a cliff dive to escape the lions, my path was blocked by two massive, highly intelligent prime male cheetahs.
But the alpha, Bradley, didn't want to kill me for my territory.
His intense gaze raked over my naked, bleeding human body with a dark, possessive hunger.
"You are full of surprises."
He purred smoothly, teaching me to magically summon a fur skirt before demanding I join his coalition.
"Oh, you'll come to me. I guarantee it."
Looking into his predatory eyes, I realized I was no longer just surviving the wild; I was the prey of a completely different kind of beast.
9.2
I woke up suffocating in the dark, only to find my mind trapped inside a tiny, plump, and entirely uncoordinated body.
A cold, mechanical voice echoed in my brain, announcing that I was dead in my original world and had transmigrated into a corporate revenge novel as the six-month-old illegitimate daughter of Edward McClure, the story's ruthless villain.
The system mercilessly outlined my doomed fate. Tonight, my cold-blooded father would abandon me to a state orphanage. By age two, he would officially sign my rights away, leaving me to die miserably at the hands of human traffickers. Outside my nursery, I could hear his terrifying footsteps approaching, his voice devoid of any human warmth as he debated throwing me out like garbage. I was completely helpless, trapped in a baby's body, staring up at a man who looked at me with pure, visceral disgust.
Why did I have to be reborn as the tragic cannon fodder of a tyrant destined to put a bullet in his own head? How was I supposed to win over a severe germaphobe when my unequipped infant reflexes made me literally pee and vomit all over his pristine Tom Ford suits?
"Your ultimate mission is to prevent Edward McClure's self-destruction. Step one: Survive tonight's abandonment crisis."
Hearing the system's terrifying ultimatum, I swallowed my adult panic, forced a pool of pitiful tears into my large eyes, and reached my chubby little hands toward the monster.