thanh.nguyenhoang.1403@gmail.com
Stories
168
Chapters
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3.2 M
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Reading
11 d, 4 h
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The klaxon does not merely ring; it vibrates upward through the titanium floorboards of the Sanguis-Geum apex laboratory, rattling the marrow inside my bones. Red strobe lights wash over the pristine white surfaces of my workstation, turning the sterile, high-altitude room into a slaughterhouse before a single drop of blood has even been spilled. I stare at the massive panoramic monitors dominating the 102nd floor. Lines of executing code—my code, twisted and hijacked—scroll down the glass screens…-
22.1 K • Completed
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The first volley of armor-piercing rounds shatters what is left of the laboratory’s glass walls, reducing the high-altitude executive suite to a storm of lethal shrapnel. I do not think. I execute. The synthetic command code that had been ripping my mind apart is gone, violently overwritten by the raw, chaotic static of Dr. Min Seo-yeon’s blood. The taste of her—hot iron, adrenaline, and stinging salt—still coats my tongue. It acts as a brutal system crash, a firewall constructed of pure human…
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22.1 K • Completed
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The safehouse is little more than a hollowed-out concrete blister grafted onto the side of a rusted industrial pipeline. We didn't make it to the gates of The Unbound. The moment the perimeter alarms shrieked their warning across the slum’s lower tiers, the rebel sentries vanished, melting into the shadows and sealing the heavy iron barricades behind them. They were not going to risk their stronghold for a royal executioner and a bleeding human. Left exposed in the rising acid rain, we had to tear our…
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22.1 K • Completed
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The heavy, cloying heat of the subterranean bunker has faded, replaced by the biting chill of the undercity's dawn. Yet, the cold no longer sinks into my bones. Beneath my skin, the Blood-Bind hums—a steady, radiant current of warmth that belongs entirely to the human sleeping against my chest. I trace the line of Dr. Min Seo-yeon’s spine over the damp fabric of her shirt, feeling the slow, even rhythm of her breathing. The catastrophic fever that nearly burned her alive hours ago has broken. In its…
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22.1 K • Completed
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The Mag-lev train bleeds its kinetic energy in a high-pitched, metallic scream as it hits the terminus of the upper corporate tiers. We do not wait for the automated docking sequence to finish. Before the heavy security gates of Sector 4 can fully open, I force the damaged cargo airlock wide, pull Seo-yeon against my chest, and jump. We hit the sloped titanium roof of a maintenance depot, rolling with the momentum to bleed off the kinetic shock. The air up here is radically different from the acidic smog…
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22.1 K • Completed
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"Mirae?" The syllable dies in the freezing air of the Bio-Shrine. The ethereal, bioluminescent blue moss clinging to the cavern walls seems to dim, recoiling from a sudden, unnatural drop in temperature. I push myself up on one elbow, the heavy warmth of our recent intimacy vanishing in an instant. Through the Blood-Bind, the radiant, profound connection that had tethered our minds together is violently eclipsed. It is not the chaotic, digital static of the Command Network that I felt in the…
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22.1 K • Completed
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The titanium-alloy doors of the Sanguis-Geum Apex Tower lobby do not slide open; they shatter inward under a coordinated concussive breach. Shards of reinforced security glass rain across the pristine, minimalist foyer, scattering across white marble floors that have never known a footprint of disorder. The alarms do not wail; they pulse in a rhythmic, clinical crimson strobe that paints the grand corporate hall in the colors of a slaughterhouse. I step through the smoking frame of the entrance, my boots…
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22.1 K • Completed
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The smoke inside the Sanguis-Geum Apex Tower tastes of melted circuit boards, ozone, and the specific, sickening copper of old blood burnt down to ash. The high-altitude windows are blown wide to the vacuum of the upper troposphere, letting a freezing gales-force wind scour the hundred-and-second floor. Red emergency strobes have finally died, replaced by the pale, cold wash of an unsparing morning sun climbing over the jagged peaks of Bukhansan. Below us, the vertical tiers of Seoul are stirring. The…
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22.1 K • Completed
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I do not have the luxury of a clean death. If I die here on the rotting loft of the Sanctuary, my father will make good on his promise. He will drop the supernatural eye-wall on this building, crushing Zora and every terrified human refugee hiding in the rafters, erasing the River Ward from the map entirely. The King’s voice still echoes off the flooded architecture, a terrifying, absolute mandate. The column of water in the street below has frozen solid, forming a crystalline bridge that leads…-
25.9 K • Completed
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The cold of the iron floor seeps directly into my bones. I stare at the massive, immovable red wards sealing the cage, my breathing shallow and erratic. The mechanical clang of Lucien’s sword striking the locking mechanism still echoes in the damp iron tomb of the flagship’s brig. He is gone. He walked out of this dungeon, straight up the spiraling iron stairs and out into the howling fury of the supernatural hurricane, to face a ring of royal guards and a tyrant king with a broken body and empty…
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25.9 K • Completed
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