The world had ended long before anyone remembered the exact date. Cities lay in ruins, swallowed by dust and silence, while the few who survived moved like shadows between skeletons of skyscrapers. Among them was Eira, a woman with an uncanny gift: she could hear whispers in the wind—fragments of conversations, memories of people long gone.Tonight, the wind carried something different: a voice sharp and urgent, calling her name. But it wasn’t human. It was something else—something waiting in the darkness of the abandoned metro tunnels beneath the city.Eira’s companions—Kael, who could see a few seconds into the future, and Mira, whose touch healed or harmed depending on her will—stayed behind, knowing better than to follow her into places where the air itself seemed to betray you. But Eira had no choice. The whispers were guiding her, and she had learned long ago that ignoring them came at a price.The tunnels were black, except for the faint, flickering glow of bioluminescent fungi clinging to the cracked walls. Every step she took echoed, and every echo carried a warning. The voice grew louder, more desperate.And then she saw it: a shadow moving against the light, but not quite human. It whispered her name again… and for the first time, Eira felt fear that wasn’t just in her head.Eira froze, her breath shallow. The shadow didn’t move like a person; it slithered, folding in on itself, flickering like smoke caught in a weak flame. The whispering grew louder, now almost deafening, filling her mind with fragments: “Eira… find it… before it wakes… do not trust…”Her hand instinctively went to the small dagger at her belt, but she knew it wouldn’t cut this thing. Whatever it was, it belonged to the old world—a world of secrets buried beneath the ruins.She took a slow step forward. The shadow recoiled, as if surprised by her courage. Then it shifted again, forming the faint outline of a human face. Eyes hollow, staring, yet full of warning.“You shouldn’t be here,” it hissed, voice like cracking ice.“I have to be,” Eira replied, trying to keep her own voice steady. “You’re hiding something. I can feel it. What happened down here?”The shadow paused. Then, in a rush of movement almost too fast to see, it lunged into the darkness and vanished. But something had been left behind: a small, metallic object gleaming faintly in the fungus-light. Eira bent down and picked it up—it was a key, but unlike any key she’d ever seen. Strange markings ran along its surface, etched deep and precise.As soon as she touched it, the whispers returned, louder, urgent: “Time is bleeding… they are waking… you cannot turn back…”Eira realized with a chill that the key was no ordinary object. It was a warning… and a door. A door to something the world had tried to bury forever.Eira clutched the key, its cold metal biting into her palm. The whispers swirled around her, urgent and chaotic, overlapping voices of the dead and the living alike. Something down here didn’t want to be found—and yet, it had chosen her.She moved deeper into the tunnels, the walls narrowing, pressing in like the world itself was trying to suffocate her. Every step echoed with a voice: “Turn back… turn back…” but Eira didn’t. Fear had never stopped her before, and it wouldn’t start now.At a sudden bend, the tunnel opened into a vast chamber. The ceiling was lost in darkness, but at the center, a massive door loomed, etched with the same strange markings as the key. The whispers turned into frantic screams: “Do not open… do not wake it…”Eira hesitated, hand hovering over the keyhole. Her instincts screamed that she shouldn’t, that opening this door could mean death—not just for her, but for the remnants of the world above. And yet… the shadow’s voice had been a warning, not a threat. Someone—or something—needed her to do this.With a trembling hand, she slid the key into the lock. It fit perfectly. A pulse of energy ran up her arm, cold and alive, and the door groaned as it began to open. Darkness spilled out, thick and suffocating, carrying a scent of rust and decay. From within, a shape stirred—something enormous, coiled and ancient, its eyes glinting like dying stars.Eira stumbled back, heart hammering. The creature didn’t move, not yet. But she felt it watching her, calculating, waiting. And in that instant, she understood: this was not just a secret of the old world. It was the reason the world ended.The whispers crescendoed, overlapping in a cacophony of warning and pleading: “Eira… you cannot stop it… but you must try…”And in the darkness, the creature exhaled, a breath that rattled the very walls of the chamber. The game had begun.The air in the chamber thickened, heavy with decay and something older—something alive in a way the world above had forgotten. Eira’s breath came in short, sharp gasps, each one echoing back at her as if the walls themselves were mocking her.The creature moved then, slowly at first, uncoiling like a shadow untwisting i

The rain came down hard on Interstate 90, turning the road into a silver blur.Ethan Cole gripped the steering wheel, jaw tight, eyes locked on the black SUV two cars ahead. His earpiece crackled.“Target confirmed. License plate matches,” the voice said.Ethan didn’t answer. He had learned long ago that hesitation got people killed.He pushed the accelerator.The engine roared as his car cut through traffic. Horns blared. The SUV swerved, realizing it was being hunted. The chase exploded into chaos—tires screaming, metal flashing, rain splattering like gunfire.The SUV took the exit too late.It crashed.Ethan slammed the brakes, jumped out, and raised his weapon. The SUV’s door creaked open.A teenage girl stumbled out, shaking, blood on her forehead.“Please,” she whispered. “I don’t know what’s happening.”Ethan froze.This wasn’t the man he was sent to eliminate.Before he could react, headlights flared behind him. Black vans. No plates. Armed men in tactical gear.Not police.One of them spoke calmly.“Agent Cole. Step away from the asset.”Asset.Ethan looked at the girl again. She met his eyes—terrified, confused, but alive.That was the moment he understood.He had been sent to kill the wrong target.Gunfire erupted.Ethan grabbed the girl’s hand and ran.They didn’t stop running until the city sounds faded behind them.Ethan dragged Lena through a rusted service door and down a stairwell that smelled of oil and old water. The underground parking garage was half-collapsed, concrete pillars cracked like broken teeth. Only one flickering light still worked.Lena bent over, gasping.“I—I didn’t do anything,” she said, panic rising. “I swear.”“I know,” Ethan replied, already checking the exits. “That’s the problem.”Above them, engines growled. Doors slammed. Boots hit pavement.“They’re fast,” Lena whispered.“They always are.”Ethan pulled out his phone, smashed the SIM card, and dropped it into a drain. Then he turned to her, really looking this time. She couldn’t be more than seventeen. No hardened criminal. No trained operative.Just a kid carrying a secret powerful enough to get her erased.“Listen to me,” he said, voice low but steady. “Whatever you think you know—don’t say it out loud. Walls listen.”Her eyes widened. “You sound like my dad.”The words hit harder than the bullets upstairs.“Where is he?” Ethan asked.Lena swallowed. “He worked for the government. Then he disappeared. Two weeks later… they came for me.”Gunfire cracked above them. Concrete dust rained down.Ethan cursed under his breath.“Okay. Plan B.”He led her to an old muscle car hidden beneath a tarp—dark red, dented, forgotten by time. He yanked the cover off.“This thing runs?” Lena asked.Ethan smirked grimly. “Barely. But it’s loud, fast, and invisible to their systems.”The engine roared to life just as flashlights cut through the darkness.“GO!” Lena shouted.They burst through the garage exit, smashing the barrier as bullets sparked off metal. The car shot onto the street, tires screaming.Sirens wailed behind them—but not police sirens.Military-grade.Lena clutched the dashboard. “They’re going to kill us, aren’t they?”Ethan glanced at her.“No,” he said. “They’re going to try.”His earpiece suddenly crackled—an old, dead frequency he hadn’t heard in years.“ColeNevada didn’t care who you were.The desert stretched endlessly, flat and cruel, heat shimmering over cracked asphalt. Ethan’s car tore through the emptiness, fuel needle hovering just above empty.Lena hadn’t spoken in over an hour.That scared him more than the gunmen.They finally pulled off onto a dirt road marked by a rusted sign: NO TRESPASSING – FEDERAL PROPERTY. Ethan ignored it and drove straight toward a cluster of half-buried buildings that looked abandoned… unless you knew where to look.He stopped beside a concrete bunker camouflaged with sand and rock.“Welcome to my retirement plan,” he said.Inside, the air was cool and dim. Old weapons lined the walls. Maps. Radios. A generator hummed to life. This wasn’t a hideout—it was a failsafe.Lena stared. “You planned for this.”“I planned for betrayal,” Ethan replied. “There’s a difference.”She sat, rubbing her temples. Sweat beaded on her skin despite the cold.“You okay?” he asked.“I hear things,” she said quietly. “Not voices. Patterns. Like… signals.”Ethan stiffened.“When did that start?”“After my dad disappeared.”The lights flickered.Then the radio—silent for years—spat out static.Lena screamed and dropped to her knees.Ethan rushed to her side. “Lena, look at me. Breathe. Stay with me.”The static twisted, reshaping itself into sound—numbers, coordinates, encrypted bursts.Ethan’s eyes widened.“She’s a transmitter,” he whispered.The Red Line Protocol wasn’t about weapons.It was about control.A human system that could intercept, decode, and override military networks—drones, missiles, satellites—using the brain as the interface.And Lena was the final successful test.Outside.

They met in a foreign land that did not care where you came from—only how fast you could keep up.He was twenty-two, dressed in quiet luxury, the kind that never announced itself. His shoes were always clean, his accent polished, his future already mapped out by a family that owned more than most people dreamed of. Yet his eyes carried a loneliness money had never learned how to cure.She was twenty, carrying textbooks heavier than her savings. She worked late shifts, skipped meals without complaint, and smiled like someone who had made peace with hardship long before it learned her name. The world had never offered her softness—so she became it for herself.They did not fall in love at first sight.That would have been too easy.Instead, they noticed each other slowly.In the library.Always the same corner.Always silent.Samuel noticed how she read with urgency, as if time itself was expensive.She noticed how he stared out the window between pages, like someone searching for something he could not name.Some days, their elbows brushed.They never apologized.Some days, they arrived at the same time and left at the same time.Still, no words.Love began there—not in touch,but in awareness.Weeks passed. Then months.He started leaving his seat for her when she arrived late and exhausted.Evelyn began saving the seat beside her when she arrived first.Their conversations grew from nothing to everythingbooks, weather, childhoods they spoke about carefully, like fragile glass.He never mentioned the mansion back home.She never mentioned the hunger.But both of them felt the difference.Sometimes, he would look at her and think,If I reach for her, will I ruin her peace?Sometimes, she would look at him and think,If he knows how little I have, will he still look at me this way?So they waited.And waiting became their language.One evening, rain trapped them under the same bus stop. The city was loud, uncaring. She shivered in her thin jacket. He removed his coat without thinking and placed it on her shoulders.She froze.“No,” she whispered. “You’ll be cold.”“I already am,” he replied softly, not talking about the weather.That was the night she cried in her room, holding a coat that smelled like safety, wondering how something so simple could feel like being chosen.That was the night he lay awake, realizing love had finally found him—and it had chosen the most complicated form.Distance came soon after.His family wanted him back.Her tuition was due.Life reminded them that love does not cancel reality.They stood in the airport, not touching, not crying, just breathing the same air for the last time in a long while.“I don’t know when I’ll see you again,” she said, voice shaking.“I do,” he replied. “When the distance gets tired of failing.”She smiled through tears.So did he.They loved each other without promises,without rings,without certainty—only faith.And maybe that is the strongest kind of love.Because some distances exist to be measured—and some exist only to provethat love can cross them anyway.

Chapter One: The Day She Was BornThe cry of a newborn should bring joy.But on the night Adanna was born, her cry was met with silence.Outside the mud-brick house in Umuorie village, rain tapped gently on the zinc roof. Inside, the midwife wiped the baby clean and smiled softly.“It’s a girl,” she said.The smile on Adanna’s mother’s face faded.Her father, Okorie Nwankwo, turned his back.“A girl?” he repeated, his voice cold. “After three miscarriages, this is what the gods give me?”The midwife hesitated. “She is healthy—”“I didn’t ask,” he snapped.That night, no goat was slaughtered. No palm wine was shared. No neighbor was called to celebrate. The child was laid beside her exhausted mother like an unwanted burden.Her name, Adanna, meaning father’s daughter, felt like mockery.From that moment, her worth was questioned—not by her actions, but by her birth.Chapter Two: Growing in the ShadowsAdanna grew quietly.She learned early that silence was safer than questions. While other children ran freely, she stayed close to the kitchen, helping her mother pound yam or fetch water before sunrise.Her younger brother, Chinedu, arrived four years later.That day, drums echoed through the compound.Her father laughed for the first time in years.“My son has come!” he announced proudly.From then on, Adanna became invisible.Chinedu went to school first. Adanna waited.Chinedu ate meat. Adanna scraped the pot.Chinedu was praised. Adanna was corrected—even when she did nothing wrong.Once, at age nine, she dared to ask, “Papa, when will I go to school?”Okorie stared at her like she had insulted him.“School?” he scoffed. “So you can write love letters and shame this family? You will marry. That is your school.”That night, Adanna cried quietly into her wrapper, learning a painful truth:Some families do not hate you loudly.They erase you slowly.Chapter Three: A Girl with DreamsDespite everything, Adanna dreamed.She loved listening to stories from the village women—stories of cities, businesses, and women who built something with their own hands. At night, she whispered those dreams to the stars.“I will be more than this,” she promised herself.When she finally went to school at fourteen—only because a church intervened—she excelled. Her teachers noticed. Her classmates admired her.But at home, her success meant nothing.One evening, Chinedu failed his exams.Adanna came home with the best results in her class.Her father tore her paper in half.“Do not think you are better than your brother,” he warned. “Remember your place.”That night, something hardened in Adanna—not into hatred, but into resolve.If this home would never love her, she would survive without its approval.Chapter Four: A Marriage No One ExpectedAdanna was eighteen when her father told her she was to be married.He did not ask. He announced.“The man will come next week,” Okorie said, chewing kola nut. “He is a trader from the city. At least he will remove you from this house.”Adanna said nothing. She had learned that silence was her shield.The women whispered. Some pitied her. Others laughed.“Who would marry that girl?” one asked.“Maybe she used juju,” another replied.On the day Obinna Okafor arrived, Adanna expected disappointment to sit on his face the way it always did on her father’s.But when she lifted her eyes, she saw something unfamiliar.Kindness.Obinna was not rich. He was not loud. He spoke gently, listened carefully, and when he looked at her, he did not look away.“She has good eyes,” he told her father. “Eyes that have seen too much.”Okorie scoffed. “She is stubborn. But she can cook.”Obinna smiled faintly. “That is not what I asked.”For the first time in her life, someone defended her without being asked.Chapter Five: Learning What Love Feels LikeMarriage did not cure Adanna’s wounds overnight.On her first night in Obinna’s home, she slept at the edge of the bed, afraid to breathe too loudly. She woke before dawn to clean, cook, and prove her worth.Obinna noticed.“You don’t have to wake so early,” he said one morning.She froze. “I’m sorry if I did something wrong.”Her voice shook.Obinna frowned—not in anger, but confusion. “Why are you apologizing?”No one had ever asked her that.In his family, things were different. His mother called her my daughter. His sisters laughed with her. When she made mistakes, no one shouted.The first time Obinna defended her from a neighbor’s insult, Adanna cried herself to sleep.Not from pain—but from shock.Love, she learned, was not loud.It was gentle.It stayed.Slowly, she began to heal.Years passed.Adanna grew into herself. She started a small food business with Obinna’s support. What began as a tray of snacks became a thriving venture.What do u think will happen next,will the rejected stone become the chief corner stone of her family. Stay tuned for more part