Emberly Kline has spent her entire life running from memories she cannot name. The city she calls home—ruthless, metallic, glittering like a beast of glass and smoke—has always felt like both salvation and threat. She works, she breathes, she survives… but beneath her ribs, something old trembles. Something unfinished. A voice she cannot remember yet somehow still fears.Everything changes the night she witnesses a stranger die in her arms on a silent, rain-soaked street. His last breath carries a warning she can’t understand and a string of numbers she can’t forget. Suddenly, Emberly finds herself hunted by people she’s never met, and guided by a man she isn’t sure she should trust.Elias Ward is a mystery in a leather jacket—steady hands hiding a lifetime of scars, calm voice veiling the storm beneath. He claims he knows why Emberly is being targeted. He claims he can protect her. But trust has never come easily to Emberly, and Elias’s eyes are full of secrets of their own. Even worse, the way he looks at her feels like recognition… as if he’s known her far longer than he should.Together, they flee into the underbelly of the city—abandoned train tunnels, secret basements, burned houses, rooftops lost in fog. Every step forward unearths a piece of Emberly’s past she never realized had been taken from her. The truth begins clawing its way out the deeper they run: Emberly wasn’t just any child. She was a subject. A test. A weapon.Years ago, a covert psychological conditioning program erased her identity and rebuilt her mind from the inside out. She was supposed to be obedient. She was supposed to be silent. She was supposed to be theirs.But Emberly escaped.Now, the man who created her—the cold, unreadable, terrifying Latham Crowe—wants her back. And he will kill anyone who stands in the way of retrieving the “masterpiece” he lost.Files surface that reveal horrors Emberly cannot bear to face: recordings of her voice as a child, drawings she doesn’t remember making, behavioral notes documenting every nightmare she ever had. Photographs show a metal room with tally marks on the wall—her tally marks—and the faded shadow of a man standing behind her with a silver ring on his finger. The same ring she sees in her nightmares. The same ring she saw in the burning house.The same ring she now knows belonged to Latham.As Emberly digs deeper, the city she thought she knew becomes an endless maze of lies, surveillance, hidden labs, rogue operatives, and hunted survivors like herself. She learns she wasn’t the program’s only subject. She wasn’t even the first. Or the last. The same room that once held her now holds other girls. Innocent children who never had a chance.Each new truth shatters another piece of Emberly’s heart—her mother’s death, her missing years, the reason she never felt whole, the countless times she had been close to discovering the truth only for the program to drag her back into the shadows. Everything she ever loved, everything she ever trusted… was either shaped or stolen by the program.Yet the greatest shock is Elias.He wasn’t a stranger randomly thrown into her life.He was part of the same nightmare.He escaped the program too.And he has been preparing for years for the moment Emberly would return to the world she unknowingly left.But Elias isn’t her handler. He isn’t her captor. He isn’t her enemy.He’s the only person in the world who understands the darkness she carries.And the only person willing to stand between Emberly and the monster who made her.As the two draw closer, the psychological tension between them thickens—fear blending with comfort, pain with tenderness, trauma with desire. Emberly never expected to feel anything again, yet Elias’s presence becomes a lifeline in the storm. Their bond grows through whispered confessions, nights hiding from mercenaries, and the unbearable truth that the program is activating the final phase of its experiment.Latham no longer wants Emberly back for rehabilitation.He wants her activated.He believes she is the key to completing the project he spent decades building—an engineered mind capable of reaching a psychological state no ordinary human could endure.Emberly is done running.Done hiding.Done being afraid.With Elias at her side, she turns her pain into power, her trauma into truth, and her fear into fire. She hunts down every thread of the conspiracy, confronts ex-operatives who abandoned the program, infiltrates forgotten facilities, and forces answers from the people who once believed they owned her life. Every step brings her closer to understanding who she was… and deciding who she will become.But Latham will not let her go.He believes Emberly’s destiny is tied to him.He believes she belongs to the experiment.And he believes the final chapter of her life is his to write.When Emberly finally faces him in the finale, it isn’t just a battle between survivor and creator—it’s a war between the person

countryside had always been a quiet place, but after her parents died, the silence became something else—too heavy, too deep, too wide for sixteen-year-old Eminia to carry.Their old farmhouse creaked in the cold mornings. The walls whispered old memories in every corner. Her mother’s apron still hung behind the kitchen door. Her father’s boots still sat by the entrance, dusty, waiting for footsteps that would never return.It had been three months since the storm.Three months since the sudden flood washed their truck into the swollen river.Three months since the village chief stood on the porch with his hat in his hand and eyes full of something he wished he didn’t have to say.Eminia remembered the night perfectly.The roaring rain.The flashing lights.The cold numbness that swallowed her whole.Now, every morning, she forced herself to get up before sunrise.She fed the chickens.She swept the floor.She tended to the small garden her mother loved.She did it because someone had to—because the world didn’t stop moving, even when hers had shattered.But deep down, she felt like a ghost inside her own life. School was far, chores were endless, and loneliness followed her like a shadow.Still, she refused to leave the farmhouse.It was all she had left of them.Their warmth lived in these walls.Their memories hummed through the quiet valley.Sometimes, when the evenings grew soft and the hills were painted gold, she imagined her mother’s voice in the breeze. She imagined her father’s laughter mixing with the rustle of the fields.Those moments kept her alive.

🌹 “THE CITY THAT KISSED HER” By Mixie ChvTHE COLLISIONRose Hartley always believed the city had its own heartbeat — a rhythm pulsing underneath the blaring horns, the chatter, the distant train rumbles. She moved through it every morning: heels tapping pavement, hair tied high, iced coffee in hand, eyes on her goals. She didn’t step lightly; she stepped like a woman planning to conquer all of Manhattan in a pair of red heels.This morning, however, the city beat back.She was running late. Her boss had scheduled a last-minute meeting. She’d slept through her alarm after binge-watching a drama she swore she’d stop after “one more episode.” And of course, the café line was out the door. But Rose was a woman of stubborn routines—coffee first, chaos later.Finally clutching her iced caramel latte, she pushed through the revolving door… and straight into a hard chest.Her coffee exploded.“Oh my God—!” Rose gasped, staring in horror at the brown stain dripping down the man’s perfectly pressed white shirt.The man looked down, blinked once, then lifted his eyes to hers.Warm brown eyes. A sharp jaw. A tiny scar near his eyebrow. Hair just messy enough to look effortlessly handsome.He was the kind of man romance novels put on the cover.“It’s fine,” he said, voice deep and unbothered. “Adds character.”“I—I’m so sorry. Seriously. I can pay for dry cleaning. Or a new shirt. Or—”He chuckled, lifting a hand. “You’re flustered.”“You think?”“I’m Adrian.” He extended his hand, stained shirt and all.She took it. “Rose.”His smile widened, slow and appreciative. “Beautiful name. Accidentally violent, but beautiful.”Her face burned.“Let me make it up to you,” Adrian said. “How about I buy you a new drink?”“You’re the one who should be furious,” she muttered.He looked down at his ruined shirt. “I’d be furious if it were anyone else.”Her heart did a ridiculous flip.They reentered the café. Rose tried to act casual; Adrian looked like he strolled through life with a permanently raised eyebrow and a hint of mischief.While they waited, he asked, “So, what’s your story, Rose Hartley? You look like a woman with one.”“My story is that I’m now late for work and responsible for caffeinating a stranger.”“Lucky stranger.”She tried not to smile. She failed.---Two hours later, Rose was sitting across from him at a wooden corner table, her untouched replacement coffee sweating beside her. She’d never talked to someone this long—especially not someone she’d just drenched in caramel latte.Adrian was magnetic. Ridiculously so. He asked questions that made her think, laughed in a way that felt like warm honey, and somehow made her feel like the room shrank to just the two of them.“Tell me your dream,” he said.“What?”“Everyone has a dream. Even people who ambush strangers with beverages.”She rolled her eyes but answered. “I want my own fashion line someday.”His brows lifted. “You design?”“I sketch. A lot. It’s kind of my… escape.”“That’s incredible.”She shrugged, shy in a way she hadn’t been since high school.“What about you?” she asked.Adrian hesitated, fingers tapping his cup. “I’m a software architect. I build things that help corporations pretend they know what they’re doing.”She burst into laughter, startling him into smiling.Outside, the city kept beating. But inside, something had shifted.When they stood to leave, Adrian paused, looking down at her with that heart-stopping gaze.“Dinner tonight?”Rose’s breath caught. “Tonight?”“We’ve already skipped half a workday together. Might as well commit to being irresponsible.”She hesitated. She wasn’t impulsive. She was Rose the Planner. Rose the Structured. Rose the Color-Codes-Her-Calendar.But something in his eyes tugged at her.“Alright,” she whispered. “Tonight.”The smile he gave her felt like sunrise.“Meet me at Vela Rooftop. Seven.”He walked away, sunlight catching his shoulders, coffee stain still drying across his shirt. Rose stood frozen in the doorway, heart thundering like she’d woken a sleeping part of herself.Tonight.God help her.---Seven o’clock arrived too quickly.Rose stepped out of the elevator to the rooftop restaurant, wind teasing her hair, the city glowing below like it was holding a thousand secrets. Her red dress hugged her hips, the slit brushing her thigh like a whispered dare.She spotted him immediately.Adrian stood near the glass railing, hands in pockets, jacket tugged by the breeze. He turned, eyes raking over her slowly—slow enough to heat her skin.“Rose,” he said, voice lower than before. “You look…”She waited.He exhaled. “Dangerous.”The words slid over her like warm water.Dinner was laughter. Shared stories. Lingering touches. Moments of silence that felt loaded.When their fingers brushed for the first time, neither pulled awayWhen his knee touched hers beneath the table, he didn’t move.Neither did sheEvery time his eyes drop- PART 2?