๐Ÿ. ๐„๐ฏ๐ž๐ซ๐ฒ๐จ๐ง๐ž’๐ฌ ๐š ๐ฆ๐จ๐ง๐ฌ๐ญ๐ž๐ซ. ๐’๐จ๐ฆ๐ž ๐ฃ๐ฎ๐ฌ๐ญ ๐š๐œ๐œ๐ž๐ฌ๐ฌ๐จ๐ซ๐ข๐ณ๐ž ๐›๐ž๐ญ๐ญ๐ž๐ซ.

๐Ÿ. ๐„๐ฏ๐ž๐ซ๐ฒ๐จ๐ง๐ž’๐ฌ ๐š ๐ฆ๐จ๐ง๐ฌ๐ญ๐ž๐ซ. ๐’๐จ๐ฆ๐ž ๐ฃ๐ฎ๐ฌ๐ญ ๐š๐œ๐œ๐ž๐ฌ๐ฌ๐จ๐ซ๐ข๐ณ๐ž ๐›๐ž๐ญ๐ญ๐ž๐ซ. โ™ก WC. 3,765

There was a reason you didnโ€™t do parties.

It wasnโ€™t because you were antisocial (although you absolutely were).

It was because the moment you walked into a room, you didnโ€™t see people.

You saw what they really were.

Your cursed System Ability: Veritas Sight โ€” the Eye That Sees.

(You would have named it something cooler if they’d given you a choice. But no, the System likes its high-drama Latin. Asshole.)

They always tell you the same thing when you’re a kid.

“People are good at heart,” they chirp, flashing plastic smiles, pressing crayon-stained fingers to your forehead like that would somehow drown out the screams only you could hear.

You tried to believe them. For about five minutes. Until you realized “good” was just another one of those words that adults threw around when they wanted you to shut up and stop asking questions.

You see through people. Not just the smiles and lies, but the real, rotten core buried in their marrow. Their secrets. Their hungers. Their leeches and litanies and little broken truths.

(He beats his wife but cries about it afterward.)

(She wishes her baby dead because it ruined her figure.)

(Theyโ€™re smiling at you but fantasizing about your corpse.)

โ‹…โ”€โ”€โ”€โŠฑเผบโ€ฏโ™ฐโ€ฏเผปโŠฐโ”€โ”€โ”€โ‹…

“Another stiff?” you muttered under your breath, staring down at the corpse at your feet. Well, not a literal corpse. She was breathing. Technically. But she was dead where it mattered: behind the eyes. You could see it, plain as a day-lit mugging. Her spirit was crawling out of her mouth like steam from rotted meat, taking the form of a sickly pink rabbit wearing a tiara of broken glass and self-delusion.

God, and she smelled like it, too. Not physically. Just existentially. Like vanilla body spray over a landfill.

“Hi!” she chirped, her demon-rabbit-self pirouetting behind her, blood leaking from the eyes. “What’s your name?”

You smiled, that careful, neutral expression you’d perfected. The one that said: I am a person. I am participating in this exchange. I am a normal participant in society.

“Pass,” you said.

“That’sโ€ฆa weird name!” she laughed, and her demon made a motion like slitting its throat with a glittery pen.

You kept walking.

โ‹…โ”€โ”€โ”€โŠฑเผบโ€ฏโ™ฐโ€ฏเผปโŠฐโ”€โ”€โ”€โ‹…

When you were younger, you thought everyone could see it: the bleeding cracks in their porcelain skin, the whispered snarls behind empty smiles. You assumed adults justโ€”y’knowโ€”ignored it. After all, they ignored so many other things. Poverty. Violence. Screaming.

Turns out: nope. Itโ€™s just you. Congratulations. Youโ€™re uniquely, horribly alone.

You donโ€™t even get a cool superhero name out of it. No “Truthblade” or “Soulseer.” In fact, the official diagnosis from the University of Sanctified Torture (formerly “Higher Education”) is “Cognitive Parasitosis.” Translation: youโ€™re crazy. Certified. Collect your sticker at the front desk.

โœฆโœงโœฆโœง

It had started when you were six.

You’d woken up one day and realized you could see the rot leaking out of your motherโ€™s smile. You could see the cracks in your fatherโ€™s hands, the parts where love had been stitched back in with razorwire. You could see the monster behind your teacherโ€™s gentle voice, gnarled and shrieking, dripping resentment and twisted hunger.

People talk a big game about “connections.” About “friendship” and “trust” and “found family.” You learned by the age of seven that these were just different brands of snake oil. Everyone wanted somethingโ€”attention, validation, power, status, pity, your lunch moneyโ€”and if they said otherwise, their Souls would just scream louder.

Imagine trying to have a “normal” childhood while seeing the barbed hooks dangling from every handshake. The way “best friends” tied nooses made of pinky promises. The way “parents” slipped their expectations like knives between your ribs.

You stopped trying around age ten.

The townspeople call you “seer” with a sneer just polite enough to not get cursed. The nobles call you “an asset” with the kind of wide-eyed greed that makes you want to lick a doorknob just to spite them. Friends? Lovers? Yeah, good luck with that. Hard to date when you can see someone’s entire psychological porn folder the second they say hello.

Everyone had something.

Some were small: anxiety mites, paranoia snakes, depression bats clinging to their backs like living scarves.

Some wereโ€ฆ

Well, some were full-grown horror movies in a human skin suit, the kind of thing that made you think “Yeah, no, Iโ€™m good, thanks,” and take the long way home.

Youโ€™d learned real fast that “friends” didnโ€™t exist.

Not really.

Not when you could see the real thing writhing underneath their smiles.

Your favorites are the ones who say, “You can trust me.”

Those are the ones with the fattest Parasites.

โ‹…โ”€โ”€โ”€โŠฑเผบโ€ฏโ™ฐโ€ฏเผปโŠฐโ”€โ”€โ”€โ‹…

The first thing you learned about “Hearts” and “Souls” was that neither had anything to do with love, redemption, or anything remotely heartwarming.

If anything, it was more like comparing a maggot to the corpse it crawled out of.

The “Heart” was what people thought they were. A “Heart” was performative: all curated smiles, Instagram bios, and “I’m such a good person” propaganda posters stapled onto their squishy monkey brains. A “Heart” wasn’t real. It was a chameleon playing charades at a masquerade ball hosted by blindfolded clowns.

The “Soul,” thoughโ€”oh, the Soul was different. The Soul was the basement nobody cleaned out. It was what the Heartโ€™s makeup tried to cover. It was the screaming thing behind the curtain, the thing clawing at the seams, whispering nasty secrets in the host’s ear.

And you? You were born with the charming ability to rip off the curtain with your teeth.

โœฆโœงโœฆโœง

Every Soul eventually grew big enough to build its own “Mind.” Not the fun kind with chandeliers and talking candlesticks. No, more like a rotting labyrinth full of the worst parts of a person’s mind, decked out with rusty bear traps, blood-slick floors, and doors that led nowhere but deeper into insanity. Each Mind was unique, a signature of rot, meticulously hand-crafted by its owner’s personal brand of batshit.

Think of it like Minecraft, but every block is made of your unresolved trauma and every “achievement unlocked” is another severed limb.

โœฆโœงโœฆโœง

“Hearts” were the armor people wore over their Souls. If Souls were the monster, Hearts were the mask duct-taped onto the front of it, desperate to convince the world โ€” and themselves โ€” that they werenโ€™t frothing at the mouth, hungry for blood and attention.

Hearts were the weapons and shields of the spiritually bankrupt. One day someone’s Heart might be a “Devoted Mother,” cooking burnt spaghetti while secretly resenting every breath her kids took. Another day, it might be “Upright Citizen,” giving charity speeches while embezzling funds to fuel his gambling addiction.

Real moral fiber there.

And you? You saw right through both.

Straight to the pus, baby.

โ‹…โ”€โ”€โ”€โŠฑเผบโ€ฏโ™ฐโ€ฏเผปโŠฐโ”€โ”€โ”€โ‹…

In this new cityโ€”the Kingdom of Nevermore, which sounded way more romantic than it wasโ€”the infestation was even worse.

Kingdom? More like landfill.

Everything was painted gold, sure. The castles were tall and glorious. The marketplace bustled. The nobles waved from their balcony cages.

But you saw the strings. The demons.

The “king” was a ragged puppet of greed, a pig-headed demon whose gold-leaf armor peeled away into fat, oozing sores. The “hero” leading the Resistance was a stitched-together beast of pride and martyrdom, crying as he cut down civilians “for the greater good.”

You step into a market square. Technically, it’s a “market” only if you’re buying human organs, cursed jewelry, or dubious stew.

You pause. A vendorโ€™s Soul yawns open like a slit throat. Inside: a church made of rotted meat, pews filled with eyeless nuns sobbing black bile. On his shoulder perches his Heart: a skinless priest gnawing on a severed hand like itโ€™s a turkey leg.

You give a polite nod and keep walking.

Youโ€™ve learned one thing: make eye contact, and they know. The Hearts know. The Souls stir. They can smell when someone can see them.

Once, a woman whose Soul was a funhouse of endless, bloodied mirrors tried to peel your face off after you looked too long.

โ‹…โ”€โ”€โ”€โŠฑเผบโ€ฏโ™ฐโ€ฏเผปโŠฐโ”€โ”€โ”€โ‹…

Another time, you’re elbow-deep in another one of life’s little jokes: a “recruitment mission” from the kingdom.

Translation: “Go to this demon-infested city we abandoned fifty years ago, and if you don’t die horribly, come back and tell us how bad it is.”

The city (“Verrique,” according to the map โ€” “Probably Satan’s Butthole” according to you) looms ahead. Spires like broken teeth, bridges sagging like bloated tongues, everything wrapped in a lazy mist that smells suspiciously like dead things and unpaid taxes.

Your boots squelch into the muck at the gate. Lovely. There’s something deeply poetic about the fact that the first welcome sign you see says, “Abandon All Hope, Etc. You Know the Drill.”

โœฆโœงโœฆโœง

“You have โ€˜the sight,โ€™” the old witch croaked once, after you saved her from getting mugged by three zombie bureaucrats. (Long story. Long, boring, bureaucratic story.)

“No shit,” you said.

“You see the rot in menโ€™s hearts,” she said, clutching your wrist in her bony claws. “You see the beast in their bellies. The worms in their tongues.”

“Yup,” you said.

“You are doomed to loneliness,” she whispered, breath smelling like moldy prophecies.

You gave her a look.

Lady, please. That ship had set sail so hard it was currently drowning somewhere off the coast of Who-Gives-a-Damn.

โœฆโœงโœฆโœง

By the time you hit your teens, youโ€™d perfected the art of ignoring it. Smile. Nod. Pretend the guy selling you apples wasn’t dragging a Soul made entirely of children’s bones. Pretend your best friendโ€™s Heart didnโ€™t look like a woman-shaped butcherโ€™s shop, carving love letters into her own arms with a razor.

Trust issues? You?

Please.

You graduated.

You evolved beyond trust issues. You’d achieved Enlightenment. Enlightenment is when you realize there is literally no one to trust. Everyone’s soul is either a horror show, a sitcom gone wrong, or some unholy fusion of the two.

In a place like thisโ€”this city built on lies and corpsesโ€”your ability was less a gift and more a survival mechanism.

โœฆโœงโœฆโœง

“Youโ€™re wasted on them,” the witch had said once, squinting at you through cataracts of ruined magic. “You could be a god.”

You had laughed. Actually laughed.

A god?

Nah.

Gods wanted worship.

You just wanted a quiet place where nobodyโ€™s soul smelled like a meat locker full of used gym socks.

Maybe a nice library.

Maybe a cat.

Maybe a cat who didnโ€™t have a demon chewing on its ear.

A girl could dream.

โ‹…โ”€โ”€โ”€โŠฑเผบโ€ฏโ™ฐโ€ฏเผปโŠฐโ”€โ”€โ”€โ‹…

Happy birthday to you.

Happy birthday to you.

Happy birthday, dearโ€”โ€ฆ

You open your eyes to the familiar grating chime of the System buzzing directly into your skull. The “celebratory” fanfare. Trumpets from a kingdom that fell into a septic tank years ago.

Your birthday cake has eighteen candles.

Eighteen.

The bakery spelled your name wrong again. They do that every year, just to keep you humble. You never correct them. You just watch the wax drip, seeping into the icing like bleeding wounds, and you think:

“This is it. Another year closer to expiration.”

HAPPY BIRTHDAY!

The words flashed in sickening neon, dripping pixelated blood like a bad indie horror game.

You blinked.

Somewhere, confetti exploded half-heartedly.

[System Notification] “Happy Birthday! You have leveled up: +1 year.”

Cute. If you weren’t already numb to the taste of frosting and formaldehyde.

You didn’t even smile. You just stood there, dead-eyed, arms limp at your sides, as the SYSTEM chimed with mechanical glee. You hated birthdays. You loathed them. Every year it was the same damn thing: blow out the candles, make a wish, die horribly in some new creative way. Like some birthday ritual sacrifice to whatever sick cosmic joke was running the backend of your life.

You don’t throw a party. Not after last time.

You think back, absently. Your 12th birthday: Death by spontaneous human combustion. Your 15th: Swallowed whole by the floor. Your 17th? Oh, that one was good. Heart surgically removed by an invisible surgeon. No anesthetic.

You sit alone, cross-legged on the battered mattress of your room, staring at the crumbling ceiling. The walls breathe. The air tastes like iron. Someone screams in the distance; it’s probably just the neighbor’s kid again, getting ritualistically sacrificed for rent.

โœฆโœงโœฆโœง

[System Update] “Patch 18.0 released!”

Oh, great. Another patch.

You remember the patch notes from previous birthdays:

  • Patch 10.0: “Added existential dread.”
  • Patch 13.0: “Unlocked hormonal instability.”
  • Patch 15.0: “Enabled realistic despair physics.”
  • Patch 17.0: “Now featuring heartbreak mechanics!”

You folded your arms. Stared at the SYSTEM screen.

It flickered, glitching.

โœฆโœงโœฆโœง

[System Notification] “Tutorial completed. Congratulations, Player.”

.

.

What?

You blink once. Twice. Three times, just to be sure you didn’t misread the bleeding letters swimming on your screen.

Tutorial?

Your mind – a finely sharpened scalpel of logic and trauma – races through every possibility, slicing cleanly through denial, bargaining, anger, acceptance. You arrive at the only reasonable conclusion.

The first seventeen years of your life, the decades of suffering, dying, restarting, dying againโ€”

Were the tutorial.

You let out a small, bitter laugh. It bubbles up, raw and caustic, stinging your throat like a swallowed razorblade.

Of course. Of course. How silly of you. All those creative deathsโ€”the car accidents, the food poisonings, the “accidental” decapitations at children’s partiesโ€”those weren’t random. Those were tutorial missions. Training. Orientation.

You were only now entering the “real” game.

“Ha. Ha ha. Hahahahaha.”

[Congratulations! You have realized that the past 17 years of life were the TUTORIAL STAGE.]

[New Achievement Unlocked: โ€˜Hope is for Suckers.โ€™]

The screen showers you in pixelated confetti. It feels like being pelted with used needles.

You laughed dryly, a brittle sound that broke halfway through and fell apart like a wet sandcastle.

Happy Birthday to you.

โœฆโœงโœฆโœง

  • Birthday Roulette activated.

โ€ฆ

Birthday Roulette.

You feel the twitch start under your left eye, the only betrayal of emotion you allow yourself these days.

With a guttural mechanical clatter, an enormous casino slot machine shudders into existence in front of you, flashing epileptic bright lights. The lever practically drips with sarcasm.

You don’t touch it. You learned a long time ago that consent was a myth in this place.

[Spinningโ€ฆ]

Casino Events.

You hated Casino Events.

You knew the rules. Once it started spinning, it had to land somewhere. Your “theme” for the year, locked in like a guillotine blade.

You watched.

BANG!

The machine cracked. The lever pulled itself. And you, in your infinite wisdom, stood there like an idiot as the symbols spun.

  • DARK FANTASY
  • BODY HORROR
  • SLASHER GORE
  • APOCALYPTIC HELL
  • REGULAR HORROR
  • PSYCHOLOGICAL HORROR

Ding!

The machine shuddered to a stop. The screen cracked down the middle. And in bright, dripping font:

๐ŸŽ‰ CONGRATULATIONS! YOU HAVE BEEN SELECTED FOR: PSYCHOLOGICAL HORROR! ๐ŸŽ‰

Your stomach dropped. Your skin crawled.

Not Dark Fantasy. Not Survival Horror. Psychological.

The worst.

[New Permanent Debuffs]

  • -10% Sanity regeneration
  • +30% Perception sensitivity
  • +100% Isolation penalty
  • World Logic: Chaotic but Legally Binding

You exhaled through your nose slowly. Coldly. A whisper of “…fuck you,” left your mouth, so quiet the SYSTEM didn’t even register it.

World Logicโ€”Chaotic but Legally Binding.

Oh good.

That meant even when things made no sense, they technically did. Which meant you could argue with the physics of a horror, if you wanted. You could say, “Hey, according to Article B-67 of Universal Physics, you cannot actually slither through that keyhole, Mister Grinning Meat Slab,” and maybeโ€”MAYBE โ€”it would work.

โ‹…โ”€โ”€โ”€โŠฑเผบโ€ฏโ™ฐโ€ฏเผปโŠฐโ”€โ”€โ”€โ‹…

In the system, you see your stats update:

Level: 18

Class: [Undecided]

  • [ALIGNMENT: Morbidly Skeptical]
  • [CURRENT LOCATION: Void of Birthday Wishes]

Title: “Survivor of the Tutorial”

Traits:

  • Dead Inside (Legendary)
  • Problem Solver (Mythical)
  • Trauma Magnet (Passive, cannot be removed)
  • Dark Humorist (Rare)

ATTRIBUTES:

  • Intelligence: High
  • Sanity: ???
  • Luck: Bottom of the Barrel
  • Charisma: Dead Inside
  • Strength: What strength?
  • Endurance: Grinding by sheer spite

โœฆโœงโœฆโœง

[PATCH NOTES v18.0 – THE ADULT UPDATE]

  • Tutorial complete! Congrats!
  • New Difficulty Mode unlocked: “Nihilistic Nightmare”
  • Skill Lost: “Veritas Sight” (You can no longer directly perceive anomalies.)
  • Psychological Horror Mode: ENABLED
  • RNG System: Casino Events ACTIVATED

NEW SKILLS:

  • Fatalistic Wit: Gain minor buffs when delivering cynical one-liners.

ACTIVE DEBUFFS:

  • “Casino Terror” (Any random event is 5x more likely to ruin your day)
  • “Blindman’s Bluff” (You can’t see the horror. You can only feel it.)

โœฆโœงโœฆโœง

Veritas Sightโ€”your ability to actually see the horror, the underlying truth of this rotting worldโ€”is gone. No, not gone.

Blurred.

You will now see the world as “normal” people do. Devoid of the hidden grotesqueries. Until, of course, you don’t.

Because they will still touch you. Hurt you. Find you.

You just won’t see them coming.

You press a palm to your forehead, feeling the tacky cold sweat gathering at your temples. This is bad. This is very, very bad.

But you couldn’t linger on it too long.

โ‹…โ”€โ”€โ”€โŠฑเผบโ€ฏโ™ฐโ€ฏเผปโŠฐโ”€โ”€โ”€โ‹…

You stare at the cracked screen, fingers cold against your own skin, waiting for the final cruelty.

[System Notice: USER ANALYTICAL ASSESSMENT COMPLETE.]

Fine. Good. Whatever. You weren’t expecting mercy.

The SYSTEM blinks sluggishly, dripping broken code like a punctured artery.

[Surprise! Bonus Birthday Roulette Activated!]

Your stomach twists.

“No.”

[SPINNING…]

You watch, helpless, as the lever yanks itself again. The casino machine wails, grinding against rusted gears, lights sparking dangerously. A flurry of new categories flashes by at seizure-inducing speed:

UNSPEAKABLE COSMIC HORROR | FLESHCRAFT NIGHTMARES | ROMANTIC COMEDY?? | NECROMANTIC LOVE | CORPSE BRIDEGROOM | HELL MARRIAGE | ROMANCE

[Spinning…]

Please be something survivable. Maybe just mild organ theft. Maybe whimsical bone rearrangement.

The machine clatters. Sputters.

DING-DING-DING-DING!

A massive banner explodes across your vision:

โœจ BONUS GENRE ACQUIRED: ROMANCE โœจ

โœฆโœงโœฆโœง

.

.

.

You stare.

Then you stare harder.

Your first thought isn’t relief. It’s suspicion. Heavy, crawling suspicion that lodges deep into your ribcage like a parasite nesting.

[Congratulations! You have unlocked a NEW DUAL-GENRE EXPERIENCE: Psychological Horror + Romance!]

[Romantic Subsystems initializing…] ๐Ÿ˜โค๏ธ

The slot machine, somehow even more smug now, erupts into a shower of metallic rose petals. One lands wetly against your cheek. It sizzles there, steaming slightly.

Your eye twitches again.

The SYSTEM flashes a popup in front of you:

[Romantic Mechanics Enabled! ๐Ÿฅฐ]

[New Passive Trait: “???’s Blessing”]

โœฆโœงโœฆโœง

[Applying new buffs…]

[NEW BUFFS ACQUIRED]

โ€” +500% Charisma when emotionally compromised.

โ€” +200% Attraction Modifier against “Glitch Entities.”

โ€” Passive Skill Unlocked: “Accidental Heartbreaker.”

โ€” Passive Skill Unlocked: “Plot Armor: Thin Edition.”

โ€” New Title: “Designated Love Interest” (mandatory!)

โ€” New Buff: “Supernatural Allure” (???)

โ€” New Buff: “Optimism Spores” (contagious)

โ€” New Buff: “Fragile Hope” (will shatter spectacularly!)

The SYSTEM window explodes open in a garish shower of pink and red hearts. Each ‘buff’ blossoms in sickeningly cheerful font, stacked one on top of the other like a funeral pyre built from cotton candy.

You felt something crack behind your eyes.

Was this a joke?

No.

โœฆโœงโœฆโœง

SYSTEM NOTICE: “Congratulations! You have officially entered Dual Genre Mode: Psychological Horror + Romance!”

SYSTEM NOTICE: “Please enjoy your limited-time experience!”

โ€œLimited-time experienceโ€ฆโ€ you echoed, hollowly.

Which meant expiration. Which meant whatever “Romance” meant in this cursed place, it came with an attached bomb.

ADDITIONAL BUFFS GRANTED:

โœจ”Chronic Charisma” (+1000% Charm Rate)

โœจ”Plot Armor – Romantic Route Only” (Cannot die until fulfilling a ‘romantic arc’)

โœจ”Visual Novel Filter” (Monsters now appear hot.)

โœจ”Bishลnen Magnetism” (You are now a magnet for “beautiful, mysterious individuals”.)

โœจ”Aura of Tragic Appeal” (Your suffering is now aesthetically pleasing.)

โœจ”Heartbreaker Immunity” (You are immune to being dumped.)

โœจ”Happy Ending Probability Boost” (+3% chance of a “happy ending”. Good luck.)

You read each line slowly. Carefully.

[New System Perk: “Beloved of Calamity”]

Description: “The worldโ€™s cruelest things will adore you.”

And with every buff, your heart sinks deeper into the frozen tar pit that is your soul.

You don’t want romance.

โœฆโœงโœฆโœง

You flicked your eyes across the stat sheet in front of you.

[Alignment Update:]

[MORBIDLY SKEPTICAL โ†’ RELUCTANT HEARTBREAKER]

โ€”Charisma: From “Dead Inside” to “Strangely Magnetic”

โ€”Luck: Still “Bottom of the Barrel” (some things never change)

โ€”Endurance: โ€œGrinding by Spiteโ€ โ€” unchanged, thank you very much.

โ€”Sanity: “???” โ€” upgraded to “Actively Bleeding.”

โ€”New Passive: “Unknowable Desirability” โ€” attracts Things That Should Not Love.

The things waking up. Crawling closer. Entities who, until now, had been content to gnaw on your ankles from the shadows. Nowโ€”

Now they saw you.

Somethingโ€™s breath โ€” syrupy sweet and wet โ€” brushed the back of your neck.

The hairs on your arms stood up like funeral goers.

You squeezed your eyes shut.

A new SYSTEM pop-up floated past your nose:

[Romance Route Opportunity Detected!]

[WARNING: Potential Suitors are not required to adhere to human behavioral norms.]

[WARNING: Emotional Attachment will have catastrophic consequences.]

[WARNING: You are now a “Beacon Player.”]]

โœฆโœงโœฆโœง

You loathe it. You don’t need companionship; you barely tolerate your own existence. The idea of some hot eldritch horror boy crawling out of the vents to “sweep you off your feet” while your world crumbles into liquefied hellscape?

No thanks.

Yet here you were. Staring at a SYSTEM UI that now dripped cartoon hearts onto the floor.

The air thickens. It smells faintly of dying roses and burnt hair.

[System Notification: New Difficulty Mode Overwrite Pending…]

Your blood goes ice cold.

The screen flickers violently. More text scrolls.

“Nihilistic Nightmare Mode” merging with “Romantic Subplot Mode.”

NEW DIFFICULTY:

“Honeymoon in Hell.”<

You drag both hands down your face slowly, the skin underneath your fingertips feeling wrong, slightly…unreal.

You feel the walls shiver in anticipation.

So youโ€™re not only forced to survive the nihilistic hellscapeโ€”you now have to date in it.

Your mind races, razor-sharp despite the crushing nausea.

If you don’t play along, you’ll collapse. Sanity Events are already tripled. The Isolation Penalty is active. Without “meaningful bonds,” your character will literally eat itself alive from the inside out.

You stare blankly at the next notice.

[Note: Due to “Chronic Charisma,” you are now considered “desirable” by 99.8% of entities encountered.]

Including…

…non-humans.

The floorboards under your feet shift slightly. You hear a wet, yearning noise from somewhere behind the wall.

You turn your head, slowly.

Somethingโ€™s watching.

Something that is nowโ€ฆ romantically interested.

The SYSTEM window pops up again, chipper:

[Would you like a “Meet Cute” encounter now?]

[โœ” YES]

[โœ– NO (not recommended)]

You close your eyes for a second.

Breathing in. Breathing out.

The world tilts drunkenly. The ceiling smiles at you with a mouthful of rotted teeth.

You open your eyes.

Select “Yes.”

Because you knowโ€”better than anyoneโ€”that fighting the SYSTEM only makes it hungrier.

The floor beneath you splits like a rotten wound.

And you fall.

Straight into your “love story.”

โ‹…โ”€โ”€โ”€โŠฑเผบโ€ฏโ™ฐโ€ฏเผปโŠฐโ”€โ”€โ”€โ‹…

โ™ก A/N. Yes. I’ve been playing and watching a lot of video games lately. Writing is just one of my hobbies, after all.

โ‹…โ”€โ”€โ”€โŠฑเผบโ€ฏโ™ฐโ€ฏเผปโŠฐโ”€โ”€โ”€โ‹…

If you want to be added or removed from the tag list, just comment on the MASTERLIST of Malum Consilium (MC): Primordial Hunger. Thank you.

Official TAG LIST of โ€œMalum Consiliumโ€: @songbirdgardensworld , @neuvilletteswife4ever

Test-Phase TAG LIST of โ€œMalum Consiliumโ€:

โค๏ธŽ Fang Dokja’s Books.

โ™ก For Reader-Inserts. I only write Male Yandere x Female (Fem.) Reader (heterosexual couple). No LGBTQ+:

โ™ก Book 1. A Heart Devoured (AHD): A Dark Yandere Anthology

โ™ก Book 2. Forbidden Fruits (FF): Intimate Obsessions, Unhinged Desires.

โ™ก Book 3. World Ablaze (WA) : For You, I’d Burn the World.

โ™ก Book 4. Whispers in the Dark (WITD): Subtle Devotion, Lingering Shadows.

โ™ก Book 5. Ink & Insight (I&I): From Dead Dove to Daydreams.

โ™ก Library MASTERPOST 1. The Librarianโ€™s Ledger: A Map to The Library of Forbidden Texts.

โ™ก Notice #1. Not all stories are included in the masterpost due to Tumblrโ€™s link limitations. However, most long-form stories can be found here. If you’re searching for a specific yandere or theme, this guide will help you navigate The Library of Forbidden Texts. Proceed with caution

โ™ก Book 6. The Red Ledger (TRL): Stained in Lust, Written in Blood.

โ™ก Notice #2. This masterlist is strictly for non-con smut and serves as an exercise in refining erotic horror writing. Comments that reduce my work to mere sexual gratification, thirst, or casual simping will not be tolerated. If your response is primarily thirst-driven, keep it to yourselfโ€”repeated violations may result in blocking. Read the RULES before engaging. The tag list is reserved for followers I trust to respect my boundaries; being included is a privilege, not a right. You may request to be added, but I will decide based on trust and adherence to my guidelines. I also reserve the right to remove anyone at any time if their engagement becomes inappropriate.

โ™ก Book 7. Corpus Delicti (CD): Donum Mortis.

โ™ก Book 8 [you are here]. Malum Consilium (MC): Primordial Hunger.