Man, the Heightening made everything so much clearer.
Max could see the individual fibers in the witch's white robes as she moved, the way they caught and released the filtered gray light. He could see the texture of her skin, not smooth like he'd thought before, but covered in a network of fine lines, like cracked porcelain.
Her eyes weren't just bright. They had depth to them, lay...
2025-12-07 04:29:03 +0000 UTC View PostHey everyone,
Sorry about the absence lately. I finally had to get that surgery I'd been avoiding for way too long.
So apparently the RSI had built up enough pressure in both my arms that my doctor basically gave me an ultimatum: either I get it taken care of now, or I'd be looking at permanent nerve damage down the line. Fun times, right?
I learned a lot of medical terms, too...
2025-12-07 04:28:02 +0000 UTC View PostThe Gamble King's chapter is coming in a few hours, too! Sorry for the late chapters, they were meant to be uploaded in the afternoon, but I had to take care of an unexpected event today. Hope the chapter's enjoyable!
A vain, proud, and hypocritical man. The kind who'd lecture you about duty while stepping on everyone below him to climb higher.
That was what Arthur had said...
2025-11-27 07:15:32 +0000 UTC View PostSo this was the famous Adom Sylla.
Magnus had heard plenty about Arthur's son over the years. The prodigy. The youngest magus in living memory. The boy who'd accomplished in five years what took most mages three decades, if they managed it at all.
He'd expected someone smaller.
The tales always made powerful mages sound like wizened scholars hunched over spell books, or thin-l...
2025-11-24 15:28:48 +0000 UTC View PostMax was sweating despite the cold.
He wiped his palm on his pants and felt the dampness there. His heart was doing something uncomfortable in his chest, a rhythm that didn't feel right.
Welp, he thought. There goes my reroll.
Because there was no way to get out of this alive. None. He could see it playing out already—the witch tearing him apart, Bro screami...
2025-11-24 15:27:29 +0000 UTC View PostAdom looked at his father.
He was expecting something. Anger would have been fine. Shock. Disbelief. Even laughter, though that seemed unlikely given the circumstances. Arthur could laugh at a lot of things, but treason wasn't usually one of them.
Instead, his father just sat there.
Silent.
That look on his face.
Adom hated that look. Ironically, he'd inherited itâ...
2025-11-22 12:43:58 +0000 UTC View PostMax shoved the man forward. "Move."
The warrior stumbled, catching himself against a tree trunk. His whole body was shaking, not just trembling, but full-body convulsions that made his teeth click together in a rhythm that had nothing to do with breathing. The sound was loud enough that Max could hear it over the crunch of snow under their boots.
It was cold, yeah. Very cold. The ki...
2025-11-22 12:42:53 +0000 UTC View PostHey everyone! So I've decided to split the Gamble King chapter into two parts to make the pacing more even and add a few more scenes for better coherence. They're gonna be uploaded in a few hours. I hope you enjoy this chapter!
A few hours after the assassination attempt...
The wolf had been drinking from the stream for forty-three seconds.
Adom counted becau...
2025-11-20 04:09:02 +0000 UTC View PostMax woke up with jerky in his mouth.
The taste hit him first: salt and smoke and something gamey he couldn't identify. Then the cave. Warm stone at his back. Bro's faint glow painting shadows on the walls.
He gasped, sitting up so fast the jerky fell from his lips.
Tarak scrambled backward, favoring his wounded leg as he moved. The spear came up, tip pointed at Max's chest. Th...
2025-11-15 11:35:34 +0000 UTC View PostMagic, for practitioners, had a distinct feeling.
It wasn't something you could explain to someone who'd never touched mana. Not really. The words existed—tingling, buzzing, humming, warmth—but they were all approximations. Shadows of the actual sensation cast onto the wall of mundane experience.
The best comparison Adom had ever come up with was heat from a candle.
Move y...
2025-11-15 05:29:57 +0000 UTC View PostAh, the sweet winter mornings in the north.
There was something special about them, really. The way the pre-dawn light turned everything blue and silver. The absolute silence that came with fresh snow. The crisp, clean air that burned your lungs in the best possible way when you took that first deep breath of the day.
Evidently, every place had its problems. The north's problems jus...
2025-11-14 07:12:48 +0000 UTC View PostHey everyone!
So I received a DM recently asking about The Gamble King's status, and I was confused because I thought I'd made a post about this, only to discover that Patreon apparently never published said post. Oops.
Please don't worry! The story is very much alive and well. In fact, I've actually finished Book 1 of The Gamble King and will be starting Book 2 soon. The absence ha...
2025-11-13 05:13:32 +0000 UTC View Post"Sooo, everything's going according to plan then, right?"
Biggins chuckled.
"Yes," he said, reaching for the teapot between them. "More or less. Though plans do have a way of developing personalities of their own, don't they?"
The pot was new. Or at least, Adom hadn't seen it before. It was glass—impossibly thin glass that seemed to shift colors depending on the angle of the...
2025-11-13 05:05:15 +0000 UTC View PostThere was only darkness.
Total, utter darkness.
Adom sat cross-legged on something soft—a cushion—and tried not to think about how this was already going poorly.
"Diviners," Beth's voice came from somewhere to his left, "usually need to sit and meditate in order to reach a state of flow good enough to perceive the threads of time. To see the billions of possibilities woven...
2025-11-11 05:00:13 +0000 UTC View PostMax's brain kicked into overdrive.
The young barbarian was thirty feet from the cliff base. The White Hands were maybe forty feet behind him, moving with that synchronized fluidity that made Max's skin crawl. The sun was almost gone. Darkness spreading like spilled ink.
Options.
Option one: Do nothing. Let them kill the kid. They'd do it while he was climbing—easy target, co...
2025-11-08 05:00:04 +0000 UTC View PostThere were two main reasons Adom, despite knowing the way to [True Archmage], had seldom practiced anything close to divination—both in this life and the other.
First of all, ironically enough, was time.
He didn't have it. In this life because he was busy avoiding the end of the world, and in the other because he was busy surviving it.
Now, those were very reasonable excuses...
2025-11-08 03:45:38 +0000 UTC View Post"Tell me, children," Beth said pleasantly. "What do you know about divination?"
Ada's hand shot up immediately, like she was in class.
Beth's smile widened. "Yes, dear?"
"Um." Ada's face scrunched up in concentration. "It's... when you know things? Before they happen? Like when mother knows I'm going to spill my juice before I do it, except... magic?"
Beth laughed—a wa...
2025-11-06 04:17:02 +0000 UTC View PostClasp.
The sound of it was solid. Final. The kind of grip that said more than words could—callused palm against callused palm, forearms locked, the weight of shared experience in every second it held.
Bubbles met Max's eyes. "Farewell, Vanheim."
"Farewell, Thorne."
They held it for another beat, then released. Bubbles stepped back, adjusting the pack on his sh...
2025-11-06 04:14:52 +0000 UTC View PostAdom stared at his reflection in the mirror.
He'd activated [Resonance] a few minutes ago, mostly out of curiosity. He'd used the skill plenty of times now—with Bennu, even just earlier today when he'd accidentally made all those journalists stare at him like he'd grown a second head. But he'd never actually looked at himself while it was active.
He was looking now.
Huff. Huff.
Pain.
The wendigo's lungs burned with each breath. The flesh around its ribs had been cooked, turned brittle and cracked. Every expansion of its chest felt like tearing wet paper.
It stumbled over a root it should have seen, caught itself against a tree trunk. The bark scraped against exposed bone where the fire had eaten through muscle and hide.
But...
2025-11-04 03:32:54 +0000 UTC View PostBack on the grind!
This little pause was really beneficial, I can actually use my hands again now without wanting to cry, which is a pretty significant improvement, lol. I've been alternating between typing and dictation, and I've also set specific hours for writing to discipline myself. Turns out having a schedule helps. Who knew?
We'll get back to a better posting rhythm now, so y...
2025-10-31 01:39:24 +0000 UTC View PostI'm really sorry about the releases lately as I'm much slower than I'd wish I were right now. I can't really use my hands at the moment, so I've been editing through dictation, which is also the sole reason the chapters were slowed down even on Royal Road, as I couldn't edit them the way I wanted to.
This chapter was supposed to come out on Sunday, and he...
2025-10-21 22:24:08 +0000 UTC View PostSam's report to Magister Everett was almost complete.
He'd managed to keep his voice steady through most of it. Professional. Clear. The kind of tone that said I am fine, this is routine, everything is under control. The magister sat across from him in his office—wood-paneled walls, shelves packed with administrative documents, a window overlooking the tower grounds—and liste...
2025-10-19 01:20:55 +0000 UTC View PostWendigos were creatures born from winter's cruelest appetites.
They stalked the deepest reaches of the northern wilderness, where civilization thinned to scattered settlements and lone hermitages. Most travelers who encountered one never lived to describe the experience, which made accurate information scarce and precious.
What the scholars did know painted an unsettling picture. 2025-10-19 01:19:38 +0000 UTC View Post
Kim was holding Adom's forearm like it was holy.
Which, to be fair, was standard Kim behavior when confronted with new magical phenomena. The fact that the rune happened to be etched onto an arm, and that arm was attached to a person—his former student, no less—seemed entirely irrelevant to him.
He'd done the same thing with the recording runes they'd designed for the tower clim...
2025-10-18 02:57:31 +0000 UTC View PostSeven days.
That's how long the research lasted before Adom found himself sitting alone in the warehouse on the evening of the seventh day, staring at the rune spread across three different sheets of parchment like it might suddenly decide to explain itself.
Seven days of five different minds—healer, alchemist, three runicologists—all focused on a single objective: figure out ho...
2025-10-15 03:51:39 +0000 UTC View PostThe wind screamed past Adom's ears as he dropped through the morning sky like a stone with wings made of fire.
He was late.
Five minutes late, which wasn't the end of the world, except that he'd been the one to call this meeting in the first place. Being late to your own emergency gathering was the kind of thing that set the wrong tone entirely. It suggested disorganization. Lack of...
2025-10-15 03:50:25 +0000 UTC View PostAdom turned another page in the Book of Primordial Runes, his finger tracing down the ancient symbols carved into the parchment. The candlelight flickered across the intricate drawings, casting shadows that made the runes seem to shift and writhe.
"Where is it..." he muttered, flipping to the next section. "Where is it..."
He'd been at this for over an hour now, cross-referencing hi...
2025-10-12 00:04:17 +0000 UTC View Post[Mana Pool: 10023/10023]
[You have reached Second Circle!]
Adom stared at the notification floating in his vision, blinking slowly.
Just like that?
...Well, it wasn't exactly "just like that." He'd just experienced pain in a way he hadn't since gaining [Primordial Body], which was saying something. But still. Second Circle. After years of careful advancement and measured...
2025-10-11 21:32:40 +0000 UTC View PostUncanny.
That was the only word that came to mind as Adom stared at the small boy standing in his hallway. Seeing Bennu in human form was deeply unsettling in a way he hadn't expected.
Even more uncanny was how the transformation had turned out.
"You look almost exactly like me when I was younger," Adom said aloud.
Ada clapped her hands together. "I told him! I said you ...
2025-10-11 02:26:22 +0000 UTC View Post