Stigma Effect - Chapter 1: Departure

Cassidy Calista never begged for love.Not even from Ezekiel Salvador, the cold, enigmatic heir to the world’s largest pharmaceutical empire.Their marriage was built on power, not passion. Four years of shared silence and a single rule: Fall for someone else, and walk away.So when Cassidy caught Zeke with another woman, she didn’t wait for an explanation. She filed for divorce.And vanished.What Zeke didn’t know? She left pregnant.Now, after four long years, she’s back. And she’s not alone.By her side walks a little girl. Bright, curious, with the same defiant spark in her eyes as Cassidy once had.Zeke watches, frozen. His world tilts.Zeke had spent every year trying and failing to forget her. But the moment he sees her again, something inside him snaps. The fire he buried returns…And then he sees him.A man. Tall. Steady. Standing too close. Speaking to Cassidy in a voice only intimacy can shape. The little girl runs to him, laughing, and he catches her like he’s done it a thousand times.She says nothing. Offers no explanations. And suddenly, Zeke is no longer the man with all the power.Because now, he wants answers.Whose child is she?Has Cassidy moved on?Is she married to another man?And the most terrifying question of all, Is he already too late?

A generation’s War God, once overlooking the world with disdain, had fallen into disgrace because of a conspiracy, becoming a mere son-in-law. However, what nobody had expected was that it was all part of his grand scheme, and when the winds of change blew, he, the king, returned, with the power to overturn seas and move mountains, as a dragon ascended to the heavens!

History speaks of a famous Genius... a genius who at the start, no adult whished for their child to emanate.GORT FAIRBANG.That's the name.He was the son of the current village chief, the son who won awards and even headed out to prestigious schools in a grand manner.But one day, a few screws came loose in his head, and he decided to return to the poverty stricken village, throwing away his good cards for the live of nothingness!Crazy! Crazy!He must be insane, many concluded.But what they didn't know, was that this one-in-a-million-year genius, had returned with one sole mission in mind.And that was to SAVE HUMANITY!

In a land ruled by vile monsters, where death is common and life is cruel, one outcast endeavors to have it all. When misfortune drags the odd goblin Stryg from his forest home and into the ruthless city of Hollow Shade, he must try and adapt to a world that only sees him as a dimwit savage.Stryg finds himself embroiled in a school of magic, where an aristocrat's smile is filled with deceit and the simplest of remarks may lead to death threats. Yet nothing will stop him from aspiring to his beliefs of glory: power, honor, and food with salt.But as Stryg navigates through the muddled grey waters of the Ebon Realm, he will learn that some monsters lurk everywhere.