The Rise of Phoenixes - Chapter 182

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.

[WSA 2025 Entry]Aiden Chase has always lived in the shadow of his family’s legacy. As the eldest son of the renowned Chase family, celebrated for their relentless pursuit and capture of Magi- beings cursed with extraordinary powers- he was raised to uphold their name. But everything changes when Aiden awakens to a power of his own, a fire within that marks him as the very thing his family hunts. When his father hunts him down, Aiden is rescued and taken to Genvah Academy, an illustrious academy for Magi hidden in the outskirts of Soleil. At first, Aiden hopes the academy will offer him solace and a chance to reclaim a semblance of peace. But Genvah Academy nor Soleil is no haven.Beneath the city's golden spires lies darkness- secrets, betrayal, and a looming war that threatens to consume everything. As Aiden unravels the truth about his powers and his family’s legacy, he must navigate a world far more dangerous than he ever imagined.Peace is fleeting, and survival comes at a cost.

Euri was quite passionate about wanting to become a perfect corporate slave.But after being forced to explore the sentient game infesting his miniscreen, Euri realized that he had stumbled upon an opportunity anyone on the planet would kill for. While the entire human civilization on Planet Nen struggled to deal with the superior lifeforms plaguing the extraterrestrial planes beyond their world, Euri could compete with them all for power by just playing this game!A side-gig that didn’t conflict with his dream of climbing the corporate ladder—how generous can fortune be to bequeath this opportunity to him.Transcending the spatial laws, transcending human notion of cultivation, transcending the rules of Cosmic Development Bureau, Euri began a series of crazy experiments that could perhaps destroy the millennia-spanning schemes of the most advanced civilizations controlling the macrocosm.When interrogated about this fiasco, Euri answered the way a perfect corporate slave should. “Full credit for this goes to my boss, who provided me with the opportunity...”

Ye Xiao was a superior cultivator in his previous life. The three factions of the realm kill millions of people every time they attempt to seize cultivation resources. Wealthy towns turn to wastelands in just a single night. They cover up their crime with an assertion that the towns were suffering from pestilence and disasters.