THE DEATH KNELL - Chapter 14: GOTHAM’S LONGEST NIGHT

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.

The story is about a man who’s opposed to the now-common practice of implanting false memories, but is one day given memories of a fictional childhood friend. This fabricated happiness torments him, but then, to his surprise, he meets her – a girl who shouldn’t exist.

“I thought I was becoming powerful, but it never occurred to me I was inching closer to the abyss.”

***

The Blue Planet: Earth.

Shane was living a beautiful life. He was a topper in his university. Girls flocked around him like birds and bees. His friends treated him as some God.

Everything was good until he was electrocuted.

If you are wondering if his adventures have ended, you're wrong. This was just the beginning.

The next moment he opened his eyes, he became something he never dreamt of—a system. Wait, why wasn't he a host instead?! Wouldn't people enter into amazing fantasy worlds with a cool system after dying?

Why did he have to wake up in a white room?!

He thought everything would be fine even after becoming a system. What could go wrong when he just had to sit behind the desk and handle different hosts?

Boy was he so wrong.

He could use Dark Cosmic Energy! Something only demonic beings could use!

What was going on? He was a human being in his previous life! How the heck could he use demonic power?

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Sneak peak~

“D-Destroy….” Shane's mind buzzed as he thought of something, “Y-You don't mean…. I-I have to destroy an entire world?”

“No,” When Ed said that, Shane's shoulders relaxed as if he had been unburdened, only to freeze again after hearing the next words: “You have to destroy worlds.”

In all my life, I’ve only made two mistakes that I regret. The first was filling out my entrance exam application wrong, and the second was offending Zhong Yuan. If I had to use an idiom to describe the impact of my mistake, it would be simply, ‘Life is no better than death’. And if I had to use an idiom to describe Zhong Yuan’s offenses to me, it would be simply, ‘Too many crimes to record’. And yet, for as evil and wicked as he was, he attracted girls the way that flowers attracted bees and butterflies.

It happened that one day, for some reason, I taunted Zhong Yuan, “The King of Hell sent you to torture some more people, didn’t he?” Without a change in expression, he replied, “In order to torture fewer people, I decided to just choose one person to torture for the rest of my life.” I asked him, “What do you mean?” He smiled at me and answered, “If you don’t go to hell, who will?”

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