Industrial Cthulhu: Starting as an Island Lord - Chapter 10: Fishmen

Stands in front of you,The overseer and protector of darkness,The disruptor and reinventor of order,The creator and persecutor of sycophants,The hidden actress queen, the goddess of the night, the nightmare of Gods and their gravedigger,The True Ancestor of Blood—Charlotte de Castell.Accompanied by madness, born from blood, hand in hand with curses, walking alongside destruction.This is a tale belonging to the Bloodborne…

For ten thousand years, the invincible Emperor Xu Lai, descends to the Earth and takes on the role of a stay-at-home dad.Anyone who dares to bully his daughter would face his wrath!Xu Lai asked, “My dear daughter, when you look up, what do you see?”“Nighttime, the stars.”“That's not just the stars, it's the empire I've built for you. In the future, you'll rule over billions of galaxies, you'll be the Empress of the Immortal Realm!”“Dad, you're bragging again. You can't even give me a little brother or sister,” Xu Yiyi pouted.“...”

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.

"I hope my wife liked the arrangements... for the wedding night."