Discordant Note | The Beginning After the End SI - Chapter 296: Family Reunion

In a world where magic intertwines with reality, a dying human girl named Elara awakens to find herself in a foreign land. The air smells of ancient forests, and the sky is painted with hues she’s never seen before. Before her stands the enigmatic Demon Queen, Seraphina, her eyes as cold as the ice that encases her throne.Seraphina proposes a desperate bargain: a contractual marriage between them. In exchange for Elara’s hand, Seraphina promises to save the crumbling human kingdom from impending doom. Elara, with nothing left to lose, accepts, thrust into a web of intrigue, danger, and forbidden emotions.As they embark on their perilous adventure, Elara discovers that Seraphina’s icy demeanor hides a tragic past. The Demon Queen’s power is unmatched, her wrath swift and merciless. Yet, beneath the frost, Elara glimpses vulnerability—a longing for connection that defies her ruthless reputation.

After being torn from the only life she knew, 16-year-old Margo is forced into a new home with strangers who call themselves her parents. Haunted by memories of her past and consumed by feelings of isolation, she struggles to adapt to her unfamiliar surroundings. School offers little relief—until she meets Lucien, a mysterious boy who appears just when she needs a friend the most.Gabriel is everything Margo needs: kind, attentive, and always ready to whisk her away from her troubles. Each night, he invites her to secret places—an abandoned playground, a fog-choked garden, a crumbling train station at the edge of town—each more unsettling than the last. Yet with every chilling rendezvous, Margo feels more alive... more seen.But something isn’t right. Gabriel never comes to school during the day. Her adoptive parents never see him. And when they catch her talking to thin air, their concern deepens into fear. They say Gabriel isn't real—that he’s a figment of her imagination. Margo wants to believe them, but Gabriel feels real. More real than anything else in her life.As the nights grow colder and more twisted, Gabriel’s true nature begins to surface. Shadows move where they shouldn’t. Time warps in his presence. And the places they visit seem to echo with whispers from another world. Margo is forced to ask herself: Who—or what—is Gabriel? Why does he only want her? And what will happen on the final night he asks her to come with him?As the line between reality and delusion begins to crumble, Margo must make an impossible choice: stay in a world where she feels loved, or return to one that barely feels real.But one thing is certain—some friendships never let go.

[You have awakened with the Lifespan Extraction System!][Extract Lifespan, advance your Cultivation and Cultivation Talent, amass an unstoppable Army of Shadow Beasts, and ascend to the Pinnacle of the World of Immortal Cultivation!]In the Super-Continent of Legaria, a Godlike youngling was born… and abandoned.Scorned and hated by all for merely existing, Zar struggled day in and day out, just trying to survive to see the next dawn. In a world of Intelligent Beasts, he, a Half-Beast, Half-Human—a species alien to the inhabitants of Legaria—had no one to rely on.By some miracle, he managed to make it in one piece to his 15th birthday. A day… which changed everything for him.*Ding!*[Are you ready to become the Ultimate Immortal Beast Tamer?]Fate shall be rewritten!Zar—a lone Godling—shall rise up and make even the most arrogant of God Beasts and Immortal Cultivators relinquish their strength to him!

I don’t need companions. I don’t do party play. But… the game forces party play?