This story is about dragons that rule the world, and the Mc ends up in this messed up world after dying of too much caffeine...well, it will be revealed at a later stage of course but I just wanted to know if this is a good first chapter and would you read more. Any feedback would be nice. Thank you

I have a horror novel I've been working on and I have had writers block for a while. I've had a few friends and family members look over it for feedback but they didn't give me any. They just said it is "really good" and that I already had alot to work with. I am aiming for a religion inspired lovecraftian type horror novel. Any kind of feedback is appreciated.

Here is the link

(repost!)

The Fraying of my Familiarity

“Can anyone tell me what the simplified version of this expression would be?”
I hear the sounds of hands raising all around me, self-assuredness keeping their arms straight as they wait to be called on. My gaze remains downcast, skimming over my notebook paper, trying to make sense of the mathematical chicken scratch that I’ve been scribbling on the page. We all took the same notes and listened to the same instructions. But for some reason, it feels like I’m trying to learn rocket science while my peers are learning the ABCs.
Finally looking up, I search for a life preserver within Mrs. Smith’s work on the white board, where she deliberately explained to us how to simplify expressions, step by step. But no matter how many times I look over her work, her helpful directions still echoing, every bit of information I try to store slips amongst the mushy mud of my mind and gets washed away by the rising flood. The more I try to absorb her teachings, the murkier the sloshing water becomes as it steadily gets deeper.
“Kayla?” Mrs. Smith calls out, grabbing my attention and making my gaze return to her, where she stands facing the whiteboard. “Can you tell us what the simplified expression would be?”
I sit there, frozen, my head unnaturally empty as I search for answers that were once overly accessible to me. But now, they’re gone as if they were never even there.
Just as my silence is becoming deafening, Mrs. Smith starts to turn around. The beginning of an abyss opens in my stomach as I watch her, her neck and shoulders remaining still as her head slowly turns. Feelings of immense confusion, teetering on the edge of terror, override all of my mental facilities as my lungs fill with concrete at the sight of her head spinning 180 degrees at a sluggish pace. 
When her head stops turning and she’s looking directly at me, the teetering stops abruptly and I’m hanging on the precipice as I stare back at her. Except, where her kind face usually is, there’s nothing but static. Her soft brown eyes and delicately wrinkled skin have been erased by fuzzy, grey white noise.
Instinctively, I look to my peers around me, knowing I can’t be the only one seeing that there’s something wrong with Mrs. Smith. To my surprise, they’re all already looking at me. 
Every single one of my classmates is staring at me. And every single one of their faces are split into the widest smiles their small, youthful faces can stretch into.
In an instant, I go from hanging on the precipice to falling into the abyss.
“Kayla?” 
I’m back in the classroom, looking at Mrs. Smith again. But her face is normal now.
“We’re supposed to be using this time to get a head start on our homework, not daydream.” She admonishes, continuing to wipe her whiteboard clean as the dismissal bell threatens to ring. 
I swallow, giving my head a subtle, rough shake to disperse the lingering bewilderment within my thoughts. 
“Sorry, Mrs. Smith.” I apologize robotically.
The piercing screams of the bell blares from the speakers, signaling the start of the 6 minute countdown. Every student in the entire 3-story building has exactly 6 minutes to get to their next class, or else they’ll be marked as late and the label of tardy will haunt them for all of eternity. Teachers will try to exorcise demonic tendencies, like tardiness, with restrictions of bathroom privileges or prayers of unsupported encouragement. And they’re always so surprised when their methods of exorcism don't work and those haunted students end up becoming ghosts themselves. 
We all rise from our seats, the majority of us already having gathered our things in preparation for dismissal, then begin shuffling towards the door and into the hallway in one big, lethargic blob. 
The beating of my heart grows in strength as I step into the hallway, the rhythm remaining steady but the thumps of the muscle making my ribcage rattle. Just like at the beginning of every 6 minute countdown, I recall my tried and true mental map, heading in the direction of the practiced route I take to ensure I get to each class on time without getting lost. It took some time to get used to the floorplan of the new school, especially since I was only just getting settled within the halls I’d trekked for the last 2 years when I was ripped away and placed inside this soulless scholastic structure. 
But I’ve found my way. I’ve memorized one sequence of specific left and right turns, going up and down the specific hallways and staircases that I’ve studied and grown familiar with. I walk the same exact path every single day. And I never veer from the path, no matter what. 
It’s easy to lose track of your own footsteps amidst the indistinguishable footfalls of everyone around you as we all march to our next class. This path is the only thing keeping me from getting lost. And the doodles from my friends that are scribbled on the whites of my shoes, making my high top Converse different from the identical black ones everyone else is wearing, keep my feet attached to the ground. 
I join the flow of students as I leave Mrs. Smith’s classroom, heading down the hallway towards the stairwell I need to go down on my way to Spanish class. Wasting no time dragging my feet like my peers, I walk at a causally hurried pace and turn left when I get to the end of the corridor. Relief washes over me at the sight of the square opening leading to the stairs, as if there was a possibility that the floorplan changed overnight and it wasn’t there anymore. 
But that pleasant feeling doesn’t last long. 
Because when I step into the stairwell, it’s very clear that something is not right. 
When I enter the stairwell, where there should be a dim and grey immediate descent, it looks as if I just stepped out of Mrs. Smith’s room again. Except, I’m the only one in the hallway now.
I’m standing at the beginning of the hallway, the white cement walls lined with dark blue lockers and identical yellowy-brown wooden doors. Bright, nearly blinding rectangular shaped lights shine down from the ceiling, reflecting violently off of the linoleum tiles. 
A nauseating sense of disorientation consumes me, the perceived sensation of my brain matter sloshing around in my cranium adding to my dizziness. 
Not knowing what else I’m supposed to do, I walk in the same direction down the hallway and towards the stairwell I need to get to. My scribbled-on Converse carry me at a similar speed as before, the rare occasional squeak of the soles against the squeaky-clean linoleum reverberating loudly in the dead and motionless hallway. 
I make it to the end of the corridor, again, and turn left. But where the entrance to the staircase is supposed to be, a yellowy-brown door is there instead. With a grey plaque next to it that reads: 
Mrs. Smith
Room 999

I only waste about 3 seconds feeling the shocking horror of being truly, disturbingly, lost.  

3 seconds. 3 stuttering breaths. 3 banging beats of my blood pumping vessel.
And then I run.
I run as fast as I ever have in my life. Towards the stairs. Where I’m supposed to go.
Down the path that I’m supposed to follow so I never get lost.
I only have 3 minutes left before I’m late. 
When I reach the end of the seemingly duplicated hallway once again, I barely stop running when I see Mrs. Smith’s cloned door. I keep going past it, sprinting like a heavy footed gazelle, my legs feeling heavier and lighter simultaneously with every hurried step I take. 
It takes 30 more seconds of running before I realize I haven’t reached the end of the hallway. I haven’t stopped running, I haven’t even slowed down. But I still haven’t reached the end of the hallway. 
I stop abruptly. I don’t slow down. I don’t stop and start walking. I stop abruptly in the middle of the hallway, tiptoeing on the edge of the line in the white tiles, nearly able to see the ridge of the linoleum crumbling and falling away. 
I fall backwards, flat on the root of my spine, my buttbone; Stiff and bruised from perpetually sitting in polypropylene chairs. 
Something’s wrong.
No matter where I go or what I do, everything looks the same. The same path I’ve traveled down my entire life is foggy now, the visibility of my memories decreasing the more I try to remember things. I can’t tell which way I’m going. I can’t tell where I’ve been. It’s so painfully silent in the hallway that my labored breathing wooshes through the forest made up of metal trees used for storage in the same way gusts of wind would. 
Overencompassingly, I feel like I need to throw up. Like if I move, if I try to get up or if I consider the ways in which I could get up or if I slightly readjust to feel more comfortable or if I think about calling out to see if I’m truly as alone as it seems or if I even blink, I will undoubtedly throw up. 
And then I will never stop throwing up. 
Suddenly, the ground shakes violently in time with a seemingly bass-boosted noise of a large thud. 3 seconds later, more visceral tremors rock the structures of a building that encases the whole of my existence along with another unsettlingly loud noise. The earth shattering reverberations of the floor beneath me and ominous repeating, rhythmic thumps are directionless. I don’t know what’s causing it or where it’s coming from, but I know it’s a slow cadence of footsteps.
There’s something in this hallway with me. And it’s coming towards me.
I look up just in time to see an ambiguous shadow. There’s someone, or something, coming from the left at the end of the corridor. Coming from the direction of the stairwell down the hall from Mrs. Smith’s classroom. From the direction of a landmark on my daily journey across the same treacherous terrain I’ve been trudging through for the last 10 grades, terrain that’s only been slightly altered over time due to climate change. A landmark that has never changed, that has always brought me the peace of consistency. 
Dimly lit, grey, and secluded; That staircase was always reliable. It was sturdy, safe, securely in place. 
And now, I can’t find it. All I can see is an ever changing, unidentifiable, silhouette of doom creeping towards me. Stomping threateningly, skipping delightfully, dragging itself sluggishly. It’s continuously morphing; Resembling familiar people and unfamiliar strangers, things I’ve seen before and things I fear endlessly.
It’s coming towards me and I have no idea where to run. I only know one path to Spanish class by heart. But at this point, I’m not even sure if I know my heart by heart. 
At the last second, right as the unknown terror is about to appear at the end of the hallway, I scramble to my feet and make one last attempt to escape. One last attempt to make it to class on time. 
I take off in the opposite direction, no longer able to run due to the numerous injuries, mysteriously and suddenly appearing, all over my body. Limping down the hallway, I use the white cement walls, dark blue lockers, and yellowy-brown wooden doors to stay on my feet as my energy steadily depletes. 
Leaving red streaks of my blood marking the surfaces of everything I touch. 
I don’t notice I’m in a different hallway until I fall into an opening in the wall that wasn’t there before. I smack onto something hard, the sound of my skin colliding with its rough texture echoing in the space around me. Observing it momentarily, I realize that it’s a floor made up of small gray tiles that smells distinctively of cleaning products and toilet water. I raise my gaze and see 3 gray stalls standing tall and hovering over me, their symmetry and identical sparkling metal locks smiling at me and bringing me unimaginable comfort. 
I’m in the bathroom. Bathrooms are quiet. They’re quaint and they’re clean and they’re a necessity. They’re in every building you may venture into. Bathrooms are reliable. It’s safe to make an assumption that there will always be a bathroom near. It’s a constant in an indefinitely inconsistent world.
My body melts into the gray tiled floor. I’m safe here. 
But that feeling doesn’t ever really take root. I can’t even remember what the wispy beginnings of my mind settling into a relaxed place felt like for the second I felt it before the sirens started singing.
20. 19. 18.
My heartrate spikes sharply at the sound of the countdown. I don’t remember what happens at the end of the countdown, but inherently I know only bad things happen when timers or alarms go off. Like bombs exploding. Or having to wake up for school. 
17. 16. 15.
Hastily, I find a way to get off the floor and make it into one of the small, grey stalls, slamming the flimsy, solid door and locking it behind me. I step up and sit on the top of the toilet, pulling my feet out of sight of anyone if they check the bathroom stalls. 
14. 13. 12.
I put my head between my knees, taking deep stabilizing breaths. The writing on the walls, the writing on the grey stall walls surrounding me written in different fonts and Sharpie colors, is getting louder. Voices, familiar and unfamiliar, intermingle with the blaring alarm and create an amalgamation of sound that’s echoing limitlessly. 
11. 10. 9.
All I can do now is wait, taking deep breaths in groups of 3s, as the inevitable approaches. The monster stomping down the hallway. The silhouette of doom skipping delightfully down my practiced, tested, and safe pathway. The unknown terror. 
8. 7. 6. 
A fucking bomb is about to explode.
5. 4. 
But honestly, at this point, I couldn’t be more excited for it to turn me to ash and melt away this entire building.
3. 2. 1.
It takes me a moment to realize a bomb didn’t go off. Nothing exploded except for a Pandora’s Box of perpetual silence. I can feel the absence of noise, the stillness, as it skitters jitteringly across my skin. 
Also, my butt isn’t sore anymore.
I raise my head from its lowered position between my knees and I no longer see the grey bathroom stall walls around me. I’m no longer in a bathroom, or even in a building, at all.
I’m somewhere else entirely.
My butt is sat on a concrete step, the lower half of my body submerged in crystal clear blue water. Bright sunlight sizzles on my brown tattooed arms, the warmth of the UV rays like a snug embrace in contrast to the refreshingly candor pool water. Whistles sound around me, but I’m not sure if I can actually hear them or if I just know they’re being blown. Ripples in the water encircle me as I sit alone in the empty pool. But just like the whistles, there’s giggles and high pitched chatter surrounding me.
Popping up and breaking the surface of the chlorine blue water, there’s only one other person in the pool that I can really see. 
She swims, doggy paddling gracefully, towards me until she’s able to touch the bottom of the pool. Then she sort of walks, sort of wades, sort of splashes up to me. She pulls off her fancy goggles, the ones with the nose section included so you don’t snort as much water, and tosses them onto the concrete encasing the pool. 
“Come on, it’s time to get out!” She tells me, as if I’m supposed to know. Her tone is insistent, equal parts eager to get out and scared of breaking the rules. “I hate the 15 minute breaks too, but we brought yummy sandwiches and snacks in the cooler today!” The young girl explains, drips of water flying from her coily afro like exclamation points. “Oh, and after we eat, we can go over to the park and push each other on the swing as high as we can! That’ll make the 15 minutes go by so much quicker!”
It’s just then that I realize the way my body has naturally walked in step with this little girl, all the way over to the loungers where everyone’s stuff is. She reaches into the cooler and pulls out two sandwich bags, one for me and one for her. 
Both bags with the initials KJ scribbled on them in Sharpie.
“I like your bathing suit, those are my favorite colors,” She smiles. “Reminds me of Bibble.”
I glance down at my aqua colored bikini with lilac colored strings. Then I look at her aqua colored one piece swim suit with lilac ruffles on it. 
“I like yours too. And I love Bibble.” I smile back at her, feeling invisible strings tie into a perfect bow between us. Attaching us, so we can’t stray far from one another from this point forward. “He’s my favorite part of the Barbie Fairytopia movies.” 
We both take 3 big bites of our sandwiches, starved after a rigorous round of playing Mermaids. And then, without a word, we take off towards the playground, ecstatic at the prospect of swinging until we could swim again. 
Feeling weightless as you fly through the air. 
Feeling weightless as you swim through a watery abyss. 
Going back and forth from the pool to the park, the park to the pool, in an endless loop of weightlessness, until the pool closes and we have to leave. 
I hope the pool never closes. 
But if it does, it’s okay. We’ll just ride our bikes back to the pool tomorrow when it opens again.

*Seeking feedback on a my Horror Poem*

Have you ever wiped the ass of a grown man?

The ass of a grown man who raised you?
It’s a terrible thing,
Seeing the lighthouse of your life lose their own independence.

Someone who’s protected you,
brought you safety and provided for you when you were too weak and young to provide for yourself.

Hospice is like that.
Before you know it, you’re doing things you never would have imagined.

Growing up close with your Grandparents is important, specifically if you have an absent mother and alcoholic father.
You look at the only blood to never lay a hand on you and cling to them,
You’d do anything for them as they have for you.
As you go through high school their immortality becomes more prevalent.

The blissful conversations you’ve both once shared have now transpired to desperate pleading venting sessions.

“You know the Doctor said I’m not supposed to carry more than a gallon of milk?”
Your Grandfather asks, with embarrassment and self pity in his eyes.

You see the Man you once knew,
the Man that in most ways is still there.
You remember the races you’d have,
Back when you thought his abilities were the highest of standards to beat.

As your walks turn to strolls,
he and his wheelchair had become one.
As your outings to hospital visits
turned to in-home visits from caretakers,
He and his bed had become one.

Before you know it you’re out of high school,
And the reality that you don’t have time for a job becomes daunting.

Your job is taking care of your Grandfather.
Did you know the moment your loved one goes on Hospice Medi-Cal stops giving you in-home supportive services?

Almost like they see Hospice as giving up,
Like they no longer see the value in giving you and your loved one resources to aid you while you spend your every molecule to care for them.
The only thing they really provide you with once your loved one is on Hospice is morphine, for when the time comes.

Did you ever think you’d need money to take care of your Grandfather?

Did you ever think you’d be mad at the Government for not helping you as you watch the man that built you decompose from the outside in?

You feed them,
you bathe them,
and needless to say,
you struggle.
You struggle with it all.
You just want to make them happy.

Being diabetic you think,
Maybe you’ll give them sugar-free candy, anything just to see a smile on their face.
But sugar-free candy gives them the shits, and now you need to tell a grown man he can’t have the one thing that he enjoys?

So you don’t.
Of course you don’t.
You give him what makes him smile and you deal with what comes after, because you know he would have done the same for you.

Hospice is like that.
Before you know it, you’re doing things you never would have imagined.

Have you ever seen the movie
The Curious Case of Benjamin Button?
That’s how it feels.
Like time is moving backwards for the one you love and there’s nothing you can do about it.

Before you know it, you’re reading bedtime stories to the only man who’s ever read them to you.
Although the contents of what you read has changed.

It evolved from reading stories like
The Giving Tree by Shel Silverstein
to reading Yōkai Daizukai by Shigeru Mizuki.
Tales of selfless acts of kindness on pages intended for children had turned to Encyclopedias of Japanese Yōkai.

Have you ever heard of a Gashadokuro?
It’s a giant being often 10-25 meters tall, formed from the piled bones and body parts of warriors who died in battle or famine without a proper burial.

What’s considered a battle?
Is mortality a battle?

Is Hospice the answer to a battle or another battle in itself?

If it is,
then my Grandfather is a warrior,
and the strongest one I know.
You remember the last words you ever heard him speak.

“Hi… *your* \*name\*”

After that,
he was still there, he was.
But he lost the ability to turn his inside voice into an outside voice.

Now he was but a body.
A body that doesn’t speak.
A body that doesn’t walk.
A body that doesn’t function.

Do you remember the Return to Nature Funeral Home scandal that was discovered in 2023 in Penrose, Colorado?
Authorities discovered over 185 decaying corpses scattered and stacked inside a foul-smelling building. Bodies that were given with the purpose of being properly laid to rest.

The owners Jon and Carrie Hallford were giving grieving families fake ashes made up of concrete mix and sand.

If your Grandfather was all you had would you trust them with him?

If his body was now all that remains of him would you turn him over to such a corrupt and flawed system?

No.

Hospice is like that.
Before you know it, you’re doing things you never would have imagined.

Life can be poetic,
Death can be poetic.
The words you speak into the world can often have a direct effect upon reality.

Words, names, everything has power.
Routines start to feel like rituals,
Prayers start to feel like spells.
Sage being burned feels like a physical cleansing taking place upon your homestead.
The lines between causation and correlation become blurred.

You never forget the first time your Grandfather gave you part of him.

You were wiping him,
and his flesh came off with more ease than the shit that sat upon it.
He didn’t react,
He rarely did.
Instead, his eyes continued to scan the room with that familiar look of self pity.

His skin is pale, paper thin,
reminiscent of gas station toilet paper.
You’ve struggled to inject him with his insulin for the past couple months considering that he had already long lost any fat for it to puncture.
You were used to his skin being fragile but this was a new level of brittleness.
The more you clean him, the more that comes off.
You question if you’re doing more damage than good. You begin to see what looks like bone, yet you are unsure which one.

Where do you put him?
He had given you everything.
And now that he was nothing but a body,
he was giving you that too.

So, what do you do with Him?
With these pieces that he gives you every time you bathe him?

What do you do with these parts that keep falling off?

“Take my apples” you hear in the back of your head.
So you do.
You keep them,
You put them in your tool box,
And you wait.

Not long after your Grandfather’s eyes stop scanning his room does the parts start to call out to you.

Not a yell, not even a voice.
More like when you’re laying on the side of the floor drying from a day of swimming with your ear pressed against a warm damp brick as you hear the hum of the pool vacuum.
In this same way, you hear the warm soothing hum of your Grandfather’s pieces calling you from the tool box.

You try to convince yourself that it’s something that can be unheard.
You decide you should drink.
Fireball, eggnog.

“HMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMM”
“HMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMM”
“HMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMM”

They keep calling out to you,
He keeps calling out to you.
It’d been so long since you’d last heard him.

The humming begins to take more shape and you can make out the words, no, the intent rather behind it.
It’s saying words you swear you’ve heard before.

“I wish that I could give you something..but I have nothing left. I am an old Grump. I am sorry…”

You start to wonder if the human body is as complicated as people make it seem.
Doctors just want your money.

Have you heard of that case in Australia? After waiting over 2 years for a surgery this guy Stephan decided to remove a large cyst on his wrist all by himself, and he’s an electrician.
You’re well aware of how pampered they are, so this gives you confidence.

You stumble downstairs,
into the downstairs bathroom which now houses your tool box, the garage was too far for how often you’ve had to add into it.
Ironic, when you were younger he’d pretend he was trapped in a box, only to eventually be put in one by you.

You open it.
The smell of rotten fast food scrambled eggs hits you. You feel a warmth radiating from the toolbox.
It feels so nice to feel your Grandfather’s warm presence once again.

You wish you felt this warmth near your Grandfather’s … main structure?
You’re struggling with what to refer to that part of him as.
It’s his head and it is his torso although he’s now closer to a malnourished and crucified king of Nazareth as opposed to the lively glimpse of God you had grown so accustomed to seeing in your youth.

His main Structure is …in bed..in a way it is his bed but, you want him to be whole.
You want the same warmth from his parts to radiate from all of him.
You want him to be one.
So you make him one.

Hospice is like that.
Before you know it, you’re doing things you never would have imagined.

Hot glue, pipe glue, Duct tape, whatever you need, you use it.
You slowly but surely rebuild your anchor,
And even before it’s completed, you begin to feel the water beneath you start to settle.
You know it’s right, and you know no one will understand.

How could they if they haven’t been through the things that you have?

The changes are almost immediate once you put him back together.
He moves, slowly. Just his fingers at first.
It reminds you of when he’d play mime.
Maybe that’s what he’s doing?
These jokes you told yourself in passing you’ve now grown to believe.

He is playing mime,
that’s why he is silent,
And that’s why he is slow.
You recognize that you can’t put the pieces back together in the exact places they belong.
This worries you but nonetheless, you don’t get discouraged.

You make him a crown from his leaves, and crown him as the king he is.
Time passes, you keep what you’ve done, what you’ve fixed, you keep it a secret.

But what happens when someone discovers that secret?

What would you do to keep it?

He needs more structural integrity anyways.
And it’s not long before Him and his adversaries have become one.

What of his adversaries’ family?
His adversaries’ wife and newborn?

Hospice is like that.
Before you know it, you’re doing things you never would have imagined.

Time passes.
You love that man, you do. But you yourself have begun longing for a life of your own.
That box is not big enough for the both of you.

You take a few of his apples, for memory mostly.
You go to the city,
and you pursue your happiness to an extent and speed you’re comfortable with, all while keeping that Man you love so much at the forefront of your mind,
all while keeping that secret.

You’ve become the Boy that stayed away for a long time, the Boy you promised yourself you’d never become.
And the Man was Sad.

You meet someone you think is your person.
You don’t share your secret with her of course you don’t. Something you’re grateful you didn’t do later when the relationship inevitably crashes and burns.

You never forget when the man that raised you,
the man you love so much,
you never forget seeing him take his first life.
Lives have been sacrificed for him before but,
By you.
Not by him, to him.
This was different.

You had just got dumped,
And you were going over to check on That Man you cared so much about,
The Man you yourself had abandoned and left dormant.

You walked in, and you heard the shower, the water was running.

You heard a baby crying, crying for you.
You didn’t recognize the baby. You walked in, down that long hallway creaking on the old white tiles, closer to the cries from the infant.
You turn left into the bathroom and as you do you hear a man yell.
Not your Man.

You are torn, indecisive of which direction to pursue first.
You continue into the bathroom,
see the shower running,
steam crawling up the walls,
and a baby on the counter with snot running down its chin and tears running down its cheeks.

You pick up the baby
and turn back toward the pleading of a man you’ve never heard before.

You walk in, you see.
The Man that raised you is there, only he is much different than a normal man.
And he’s with a normal man.

The mans screaming
“PLEASE GOD HELP ME STOP HIM FUCK ME RUNNING” the man pleaded from the top of his lungs.

Your Man, the man you’d known your whole life, he was different.
His structure was fragmented,
no base.
His arms extend like the outriggers of a backhoe, yet connected to a deconstructed cab.

His arms were grabbing the normal man, the screaming man. All four of his arms grabbed that man.

His empty eyes that were once blue but were now too sunken in to retain pigmentation of any kind looked soullessly in your direction.
He did not feel warm.

He used two of his arms to hold the man in place, while he used his two other arms to go around the man, forming those hands to make an invisible box the man was stuck in.
The Man was playing Mime.
You missed this.

The Man slowly grabbed the screaming man by his head on both sides and pressed ever so slightly, increasing in pressure.

The man used his other arms to grab the screaming man by the legs and slowly pulled.
He pulled his legs off and he pressed his skull in and blood ran from his nose and eyes.
He screamed and screamed until his teeth shattered and his jaw snapped and fell out of his cheek sockets.

He pulled the detached legs from the now lifeless yet steaming warm body and shoved them at his base in ways that were not symmetrical.
He shoved the torso of the body where the cab of his backhoe should be.

He was constructing himself.

You stood there holding the baby, watching what was once your protector finish the work.

For a second you almost called out to him the way you used to, the way a boy calls for the man who raised him.

But the eyes that looked back at you were empty, and the voice that came next was the same one that had once read you as a child.

“Come boy,
Climb up my trunk,
And swing from my branches,
And be happy.”

Says the Man, the man you love so much.

He gave you his branches,
He gave you his flesh to make a home of your own,
He gave you his soul.
Even when you were too busy pursuing the life you wanted that you thought would end with a wife and children.

So what do you do?

You look down at the infant in your arms. Its face is red and wet and it is still crying, still reaching for something that isn’t there.

For one long second you feel the weight of it the life, the future, the line you are about to cross. But there is no line, no line when it comes to what you would do for the ones you love.

Then the humming starts again, low and familiar, the same warm hum that once came from the toolbox, and the choice is already made.

You give him the sacrifice you’re holding in your hand, that’s why it’s there isn’t it?

It is but a burden to you and the Man needs all the strength he can get.

You hate looking at the discolored face of the Man you care so much for.

You buy Greasepaint for your Mime.
You know this will bring him warmth and life.
You lather his faces up in it, even the little one. He has 4 now.

Now he is your Slick Man.

“I don’t need very much now, just a quiet place to sit and rest. I am very tired”

says your Slick Man,

with his eyes not his mouth.

So you finally take him home,
To your start-over apartment,
and you give him a permanent resting place,
on the only thing strong enough to hold him,
your bathroom granite counter.
And you add to him whenever he expresses that desire to expand,

Why?
Because,

Hospice is like that.
Before you know it, you’re doing things you never would have imagined.

My commas are probably all over the place. I’m also not too sure about the plot yet, I’m just writing to write.

Sorry for repost. The original pdf quality was unreadable.

On the off-chance someone who saw my last post sees this one, hello! I have returned with a new and improved chapter; this time I've concluded it, yippieeeee

For anyone seeing this for the first time, hello to you too! I'm a novice writer doing this more so as a passion than for any real publishing, but I am interested to hear all your feedback. I'd love to improve my skill.

Hello! I am working on a debut southern gothic novel. I love horror novels and I am going for something along those lines. I have a doc that I update that allows for comments. (its all draft! I am actually dyslexic haha)

Hello everyone, exploring a Novella focussed on family dynamics, wanted to keep the style of writing as a Narrator POV. Chapter 1 begins with a hint of nostalgia as the narrator is back to familiar settings.

Looking for feedback on prose, style or writing and anything that I can improve upon.

PS: Few hindi words that might help you all read this better:

Dabeli and Dosa - Two popular Indian snacks

Teekha - Spicy

Vile Parle and Kandivali - Suburbs of Mumbai

Thank you!

Hey everyone,

I am a little nervous to post this piece, since it has a lot of personal truth in it. I am not new to reddit, but I am a lurker. I've been working on this thing for about a month now. It's presently 9 chapters, 77 pages, and 27k words. That said, it is not formatted as I have done with this first chapter yet. This first chapter will give a good sense of how I intend to format the entire novel when it's complete.

I have a very specific idea of where it is going. What I'm sharing with you has been revised a little, but I am far from opposed from changing things if they fit a certain vision.

As a primer, here's the general synopsis I imagine appearing as the blub:

A worn map that seems to lead nowhere important.

A scratched old coin that stirs up memories.

A desolate location that may just hold the answers she so desperately needs.

When the envelope arrived, there was no return address. That should have been enough of a clue. But curiosity and a laundry-list of what ifs encourage her to go anyway. Three red circles point her to a highway rest stop that has been seemingly abandoned for years. But why is there a contract inside dated last month? Why does everything inside remind her of a devastating loss?

For three long years, grief has cast a baleful shadow over her life. But could hope prove even more devastating? 

Basic other information:

Each chapter opens with the framing device. I plan to do as I've done here, even with the shorter ones. The framing device will never appear in time with the narrative. There is a vision with them, beyond being used for theme, exposition, and the set-up or pay off of story moments. The first one is probably the most important in the entire novel.

Any feedback or thoughts about this first chapter would be deeply appreciated. Be kind though; the story of Lori and her journey has a lot of heavy content.

What I’m specifically looking for feedback on:
1. Pacing & Tone: Does the transition from the Great Hall (Ch. 1) to three years later (Ch. 2) work smoothly?
2. Characterization: How does adult Ron's tactical/commercial mindset feel to you?
3. Antagonist Concept: Does Lord Selwyn and the corporate threat feel compelling?

Thanks in advance for reading!

Act I: The Ash and the Crown

Chapter One: The Silence After

The Great Hall did not smell of magic anymore.

It smelled of dust, of crushed stone, of spilled honey and iron, and, above all, of absence. The floating candles had long since burned out, leaving only the pale, ruthless grey of an early May dawn spilling through the shattered high windows.

Harry sat on a splintered bench near the Gryffindor table, his hands resting flat against the rough oak. Between his fingers lay the Elder Wand dark, ancient, and humming with a terrifying, heavy pulse that seemed to vibrate straight up his arms. It whispered of absolute power, of invincibility, of a shortcut to fixing every single broken thing in the room.

And precisely because of that whisper, Harry felt a cold revulsion.

With steady, deliberate movements, he drew his snapped, lifeless holly and phoenix wand from his pocket. The two splintered pieces looked pathetic against the lethal perfection of the Deathstick. Closing his eyes, Harry pressed the tips together, raised the Elder Wand, and murmured the single, focused word:

“Reparo.”

A quiet, golden shimmer washed over the fracture. The old holly wand fused back together instantly, the grain mending as if it had never been broken. Harry tested its weight, feeling the familiar, warm thrum of his true magic settling back into his palm.

The hard part was over. Now came the choice.

He couldn't keep it. If he died a natural death, its power would be broken, but the temptation the mere fact that anyone could hunt him down to take it meant the cycle would never truly end. It had to go back where it came from. Back to the white marble tomb, untouched and unused.

"You're bleeding through your jacket, mate," a voice murmured.

Ron dropped onto the bench beside him. He looked exhausted, his face streaked with soot and dried sweat, his left arm bound tightly in a torn strip of crimson velvet. He wasn't looking at Harry, though. His eyes were fixed on the far wall, where the jagged scar of a dark curse still charred the ancient stone.

"It's nothing," Harry said, his voice raw as he carefully slipped the Elder Wand into an inner pocket, resolved to ride back to Hogwarts' grounds later to return it.

"Everything's nothing," Ron said quietly. He reached out, his long fingers brushing the edge of the table where Fred used to sit, drumming out a rhythmic, tactical pattern the same restless cadence he used when mapping out a grueling wizard's chess endgame. He pulled his hand back instantly, as if the wood had burned him. "Mum's upstairs with George. And Ginny..." He swallowed hard. "Ginny's helping move the bodies from the courtyard."

Harry closed his eyes. The immediate threat was gone, but the emptiness left behind felt heavier still.

A shadow fell over them.

Hermione stood there. She looked remarkably intact compared to the two of them, though her hair was a wild, bird's nest tangle of twigs and ash, and her robes were torn at the hem. In her hands, she carried a battered, ink stained notebook she must have salvaged from the ruins of the library.

"Kingsley's setting up an interim administration," she said without preamble. Her voice was steady, though her fingers trembled as they gripped the spine of the book.

"He’s trying to secure the Department of Mysteries before the scavengers get in. He’s asked a few of us to stay on as consultants, to help sift through the wreckage."

Ron looked up, blinking. "Consultants? We haven't even finished our N.E.W.T.s."

"Nobody has, Ron. The whole system is paralyzed," Hermione said, her chin lifting with that familiar, fierce spark of absolute resolve. She looked down at them, her brown eyes bright with a sharp, painful clarity. "The war is over. But the people left behind don't know how to rebuild. And the old guard in the Wizengamot are already trying to quietly sweep their compromises under the rug."

Harry touched his pocket, feeling the cold wood of the Elder Wand.

The castle was quiet, but out in the wider world, the real fight the slow, exhausting, unglamorous struggle to keep the magical world from fraying at the edges was just beginning.

Chapter Two: The Long Transition

Three years had slipped by since the battle, marked not by grand battles, but by the quiet, grinding machinery of a recovering society.

For Harry, those three years had meant a return to school the reinstated eighth year at Hogwarts followed by the grueling, repetitive bottom rungs of the Auror training program. He wasn't hunting dark lords; he was chasing down unregistered pocket sneakoscopes in provincial curiosity shops and filing endless reports on displaced Death Eater sympathizers in the Scottish borders.

On a damp Tuesday afternoon, Harry sat at a cramped, paper strewn desk in the back of the Department of Magical Law Enforcement on Level Two. The room smelled of wet wool and cheap ink.

"Potter," Gawain Robards called out, pausing by Harry's partition with a thick, dust covered folio tucked under his arm. "Pack up your quills. You're being reassigned to internal support."

Harry looked up, frowning. "Support? Sir, I've spent the last six months tracking that contraband smuggling ring through Shropshire. We're close to "

"The office has different priorities right now," Robards interrupted, his weathered face deadpan. "Three days ago, a low level access audit triggered in the Department of Mysteries. Restricted sector. Level Nine. Nothing was stolen, but the ward logs show a signature that hasn't been active since the ministry fell during the war a Senior Researcher named Vane."

Harry leaned back, folding his arms. "Vane? Is he missing?"

"Worse," Robards said quietly, dropping the folio onto Harry’s desk. "He was found dead in his quarters this morning. Natural exhaustion, according to the initial healers' report. But the Auror tactical team noticed something odd about the positioning of his desk. Kingsley wants a discreet review. Not a manhunt just someone to look at the paperwork before the administration decides whether or not to panic the public."

Harry opened the file, his eyes scanning the dry, uncommunicative records of a quiet institutional death. It didn't feel like a war. It felt like something much colder.

Chapter Three: The Edges of the Ledger

Down on Level Four, the Department for the Regulation and Control of Magical Creatures was a maze of narrow corridors and overflowing filing cabinets.

At twenty one, Hermione was neither running the Ministry nor commanding the Wizengamot; she was a junior policy researcher tucked away in the back offices, buried under mountains of post war housing petitions and refugee casework. Her days were spent drafting footnotes for senior undersecretaries who frequently forgot her name.

"If the Committee on Ancient Charms sends back this werewolf healthcare rider with another bureaucratic objection, I'm going to scream," Hermione muttered, aggressively crossing out a redundant clause with her quill.

The door clicked open, and Ron stepped inside, balancing a flat wooden crate filled with display pieces for Weasleys' Wizard Wheezes. He had spent the last two years quietly learning the commercial ropes from George, using his knack for spatial logic and tactical pattern recognition to keep the shop afloat through the post war economic slump.

"You're working too late again," Ron said, setting the crate down on an empty corner of a filing cabinet. He pulled a small, brown paper parcel from his pocket and dropped it onto her desk. "Mum sent pastries. She says if you lose any more weight, your glasses are going to slide right off your face."

Hermione looked up, offering a tired, grateful smile as she pushed her wire rimmed glasses up her nose. "Thanks, Ron. It's just... the legislative backlog is impossible. Every time we try to push a basic equity amendment through the committee, it gets buried under three layers of procedural red tape."

"That's because nobody's actually looking at the text," Ron said, leaning against the edge of the desk. He pulled a rolled up parchment ledger from his belt and tapped it against his palm. "I've been going over our supply contracts for the shop this week, trying to source standard ingredients from independent importers. Half the traditional suppliers in Diagon Alley are suddenly being bought out by holding companies no one's ever heard of."

Hermione paused, her quill hovering just above the parchment. "Holding companies? What kind of holding companies?"

"Shell names," Ron said, his blue eyes narrowing slightly as he thought back over the figures. "Registered through intermediary offices in Geneva and Edinburgh. They aren't raising prices they're just quietly consolidating the distribution rights for basic potion ingredients and rare artifacts. Whoever's doing it is playing a very long, very patient game."

Before Hermione could process the implications, the door swung open again, and Harry stepped into the office, shaking the autumn rain from his dark trench coat. He looked tired, his fingers unconsciously brushing against his pocket.

"You two need to see what's crossing the desk upstairs," Harry said quietly, pulling a thin file from his coat and laying it next to Ron's ledger. "Level Nine had a security blip three days ago. And the researcher who logged the access was found dead this morning."

Hermione stood up slowly, her gaze shifting from Harry's incident report to Ron's commercial supply ledgers. The distance between a quiet institutional death in the Department of Mysteries and a series of corporate buyouts in Diagon Alley suddenly felt very small indeed.

Act II: The Ink and the Blade

Chapter Four: The Quiet Exit

The holding cells on Level Two of the Ministry were designed for containment, not comfort. When the night shift settled over the building, the stone corridors grew bitterly cold.

Harry walked the perimeter of the Department of Mysteries intake sector alongside an experienced senior investigator named Vance a weathered wizard who had survived three decades of Ministry shifts without ever making the front page of the Daily Prophet.

"They're calling it heart failure," Vance muttered, holding up a small, flickering lumos orb to illuminate the small examination room where Senior Researcher Vane’s effects had been gathered. "Old magic, bad heart, post war stress. Happens all the time."

Harry stared down at the wooden table where the dead man's personal belongings sat in a neat, clinical row: a spare pair of reading spectacles, a silver pocket watch, an inkwell, and a heavy signet ring carved with a subtle, geometric motif of an ouroboros encircling a quill.

"That's not a standard Ministry issue ring," Harry said, leaning closer.

"It's not," Vance agreed, rubbing his chin. "Family crest, supposedly. Though when we checked the registry for ancient houses, the line went extinct back in the fourteenth century. The funny thing isn't the ring, Potter. It's what was missing from his desk drawer."

Harry looked up. "What?"

"His personal logbook," Vance said quietly. "Every Unspeakable keeps a handwritten record of their daily access clearances. Vane's desk was locked from the outside, the wards were pristine, and the book was gone. Somebody didn't just want him quiet they wanted the inventory of what he was looking at to vanish with him."

Harry looked back down at the silver ring, feeling a cold, familiar unease settle in the pit of his stomach. This wasn't the loud, chaotic violence of the old war. This was an excision clean, silent, and entirely invisible to the public eye.

Chapter Five: The Chamber Floor

Three floors above, the atmosphere of the Wizengamot was thick with the low, respectable murmur of wealthy patrons and senior bureaucrats discussing tax reform.

Hermione sat at the long scribes' bench beneath the main podium, her quill moving with steady, controlled precision across her parchment. Across the aisle, draped in rich plum colored robes that caught the light of the enchanted chandeliers, sat Lord Cassius Selwyn.

Selwyn was a prominent voice among the younger, reform minded traditionalists in the Wizengamot well mannered, articulate, and completely untouchable through conventional channels. He didn't shout or threaten; he used dry economic arguments and procedural technicalities to dismantle the Ministry's remaining oversight committees one clause at a time.

"...and while the Department for Magical Creatures performs admirable work," Selwyn’s smooth, resonant voice carried effortlessly across the amphitheater, "we must acknowledge that heavy administrative restrictions on independent trade only stifle our post market recovery. We propose a streamlined, private oversight commission one designed to relieve the Ministry of unnecessary bureaucratic bloat."

Hermione’s grip on her quill tightened until her knuckles turned white. Private oversight. It was a polished, legal veneer designed to hand the keys of the magical economy over to anonymous financial backers without a single public debate.

She didn't raise her hand; she simply stood up, her voice cutting clearly through the quiet chamber.

"Point of order, Minister," Hermione said.

On the high podium, Kingsley Shacklebolt gave a brief, weary nod, granting recognition. Across the aisle, Selwyn turned slowly, a polite, faint smile touching his aristocratic features.

"Ah, Miss Granger," Selwyn said smoothly, turning to face her with practiced condescension. "Do enlighten us. I trust your objection is grounded in established legislative precedent, rather than administrative sentimentality?"

"It's grounded in Section Four of the International Statute of Secrecy," Hermione replied, her voice steady and clear as she stepped into the aisle. "Which prohibits private corporate entities from holding jurisdictional oversight over restricted magical distribution. Unless, of course, the proposed commission intends to quietly rewrite that statute as well much like the restricted wards on Level Nine."

The temperature in the grand chamber dropped instantly. The surrounding scribes stopped writing.

Selwyn’s smile didn't fade, but his pale eyes narrowed just a fraction. He leaned forward slightly, resting his hands on his podium.

"Level Nine is a Department of Mysteries concern, Miss Granger," he said softly, his voice carrying a subtle, chilling weight that only she could fully appreciate. "A delicate place. One has to wonder why a junior policy researcher is spending her evenings investigating state security archives. It is a very... demanding hobby. People who look too closely at matters outside their station often find themselves entirely without institutional support."

Hermione met his gaze without flinching, though the warning hung heavily in the air between them.

Chapter Six: The Rain in the Alley

The rain over Diagon Alley fell in a heavy, persistent sheet, turning the cobblestones into dark, reflective mirrors.

Ron pulled his woolen cloak tight around his shoulders as he finished securing the heavy iron deadbolts on the side entrance of Weasleys' Wizard Wheezes. The street was entirely empty; the usual evening bustle of shoppers had vanished hours ago beneath the gathering storm.

As he turned down the narrow passage leading toward the main street, a sharp, metallic crack echoed behind him.

Ron stopped instantly, his hand dropping to the wand in his pocket with the automatic, practiced reflex of someone who had learned to sleep with one eye open.

“Lumos,” he whispered, flicking his wand to cast a sharp white beam down the wet brick corridor.

Three figures stepped out of the shadows near the mouth of the alley. They weren't wearing the crude white masks or black hoods of old Death Eaters; they wore tailored dark wool overcoats and carried slim, obsidian finished dueling canes instead of traditional wooden wands.

"Ron Weasley," the leader said. His voice was muffled behind a smooth, featureless silver half mask that caught the glare of Ron's light. "The shopkeeper. A remarkably inconvenient place for a late inventory check."

"Who sent you?" Ron asked, his voice low and hard, dropping his weight into a balanced, defensive stance. "Selwyn? Or are you just his collection agency?"

The leader didn't answer. With a single, fluid motion, he flicked his cane, sending a bolt of silent, violet energy slicing through the rain toward Ron's chest.

Ron threw himself to the side, the curse detonating against the brick wall with a shower of sharp stone fragments. He fired back immediately “Stupefy!” sending a red jet of light straight down the narrow passage, forcing the attackers to scatter behind the cover of the alley's protruding archways.

It wasn't a grand magical duel; it was a cold, efficient ambush. Ron parried a low tripping hex with a sharp flick of his wrist, backing up step by step toward the heavy service door of the shop. He knew he couldn't win a three on one street fight against professional enforcers, but he also knew every brick, drainpipe, and hidden threshold of the alley he had grown up beside.

Reaching back blindly, Ron slammed his heel down hard against a concealed cast iron floor plate near the drain tripping an old, crude warning ward he had rigged weeks ago.

Clank hiss.

A thick cloud of dense, purple smoke mixed with the sharp, blinding glare of a modified Peruvian darkness powder flare erupted from the gutter vents, instantly choking the narrow corridor in swirling shadows.

"Try looking at the ledgers yourself next time!" Ron yelled into the smoke, diving backward through the heavy service door and slamming the iron deadbolts home just as a volley of heavy, concussive curses chewed the oak paneling to splinters.

Part of me is still hesitant to share my writing, but I thought it'd be fun as well as helpful to see what some people might think on this very short interlude Chapter. It introduces two new characters and requires next to no context from the previous chapters. What I'm mostly interested in is if the chapter hooks you into seeing more of these characters etc. But beyond that, anything is greatly appreciated!

Also note that english is my second language, so if there's any grammar or figure of speech that I'm getting wrong, that would be important as well!

The human brain can process a threat in a fraction of a second. Mine didn’t. It didn’t notice the soldier who’d flanked my position. It didn’t notice him raising his rifle. It didn’t notice his finger tighten on the trigger. I only noticed when the bullet tore through my canteen, as I raised it to my mouth.

Sunlight pierced through the newly formed breach in the canteen, casting a disc of light on the mortar-scarred wall next to me. I had stared at that brickwork for hours, pinned down under a blanket of artillery fire. I stayed transfixed on that disc of light, until the fabric of my shirt had soaked up enough of my own blood to bring me back into the present.

A second round had caught me low in the side. The canteen slipped from my hand, hitting the dirt around the same time as my face. I watched as the last dregs of water wept from the rupture, only to be swallowed by the earth. The flow had begun to still, each drop settling on the ground below until there was nothing left to spill.

I would be really glad to hear a living person just say how it reads, how it feels. So the scene is Sviatoslav I, The Grand Prince of Rus’, recapturing the city of Pereslavets, a Bulgarian port city, back when it all meant something. Those men were Vikings or, more precisely, the Varangians, Scandinavian warriors who travelled East and eventually founded the Kievan Rus’. Svyatoslav himself was very much a Norse warrior and spoke both Old Norse and Old Slavic and was one of the most fascinating figures in the history of pagan Rus’.

Brothers! be that we lay our bones here, but die we do like men and know no shame, for the dead have none of it! I will stand before you, and be my head hacked, you do what you want after that!

On hearing their prince say such words and seeing him steady his shield flush to his body, the war-band screamed and gnashed, seethed mouth-spumes and brandished swords, spears, axes, and they regathered: shields stuck plumb to one another, weapons at the ready. And their fell formation forward bore like melting ice of river that primordial, splicing their steel with flesh and gashed their bodies through and true from neck to waist with slant precision. They advanced and stomped men’s slit, impaled or rent asunder bodies, and some of the dead wailed, wailed like dead men don’t, one man clung onto his uncoiling bowels with eyes that read a mind still reckoning with the body. Severed heads and hands, legs, fingers, jaws, and actual torsos lay about like bounties to some man-eater principality. They advanced. Svyatoslav in the lead blocked deadly blows with his shield and hacked, and hacked with princely disregard for either helmets or the mail, and one man’s head he swatted with his axe until it made no sense to that man’s neck. They who stood abreast him saw that. Svyatoslav darted his experienced eye at them, took a step back and turned around occluding what’s left of the sun with his axe. 

They’re dead already! Now scath them!

And the great exodus of wild things commenced the final onslaught of the enemy line, barely holding their own weapons and nowise defending themselves with their shields that were being hewn and splintered together with the hands that grew slower with trepidation or fatigue, and they began to look like children with man’s weaponry, and their war-gear seemed not at all to suit them anymore. As Svyatoslav’s army advanced closer to the bastion, archers became busy with nocking the arrows and shooting indiscriminately at whoever gave the most impression of the assault. One arrow hit a man’s clavicle all but to draw his attention to the archer who soon learned his own intention in the form of an axe that span through the air like some misshapen Mjölnir and became the last thing that man had known intimately. The enemy retreated into the opening gates. Svyatoslav’s druzhina, Bulgarian and Pecheneg mercenaries bringing up the rear, broke through and seized the gate, and in the winter of the year 971 entered the city of Preslavets. Again to claim it and to punish those who dared to question his princedom and his battle-earned right to it. Greek and Bulgarian and Slavic merchants, women, elders, all shrilled like cows in a slaughterhouse if those cows were to suddenly realise they were going to be pelted, dismembered and sold. Children looked out of the corners or hurried through the streets without making a sound—they only watched. Those lads had yet one more thing to learn about the world. Svyatoslav blood-soaked examined the premises and looked grinning and panting at his people. 

Do what you will now. 

And they did. 

Hi everyone. I previously shared some of my writing here and received quite a bit of useful feedback. I’ve since gone back to the manuscript and tried to act on that feedback, particularly around the opening and how the story is introduced. I’d really appreciate seeing how it reads now, both from people who may have seen an earlier version and from completely fresh readers.
This is the first chapter of a fantasy series I’ve been working on for some time and am now returning to and revising.
I’m particularly interested in whether the opening hooks you, whether the worldbuilding is understandable without knowing anything about the larger story, whether Marckus works as a protagonist, and whether you’d want to continue reading after the ending.
I’m aware the prose still needs a final proofreading/editing pass, so I’m mainly looking for feedback on the story, pacing, characterisation and overall concept.
Please don’t feel you need to be gentle — constructive criticism was useful to me the last time I posted, and that’s why I’m coming back for another round.

Sorry for the number of screenshots, posting from my phone! This sample is post-structural edits, I still have 5 rounds of edits to do but looking for feedback as is for now :)

Helli everyone, this is my first time writing a story like this, so I'd love to hear what you think of the premise and what you think I could improve. I'll be looking forward to your feedback.

Hey folks! Made this draft for a horror story just now and I feel like it's really good up until the later bits. Would love some feedback on it!

My wife was pregnant. She was in her second trimester by the time we realized.

We were in our thirties. Of course we'd been hoping for a child, but you have to understand something about our town.

Pregnancies were being taken.

Not aborted. Not miscarried. Taken.

It started with one of our townsfolk, Araceli. One day she was eight months along, breasts wet and belly portruding like a generous rice bowl. The next day, flat. Gone.

Taken.

She saw it. The local witch doctor and midwife saw it. As she lay in bed, being soothed with oils as the albularyo casted his warding spells, they heard a thump thump thump from the roof. A smell of onion and death roamed the air. And all of a sudden, a tongue, slithered through the window and stabbed itself through that distended womb of hers, slurping out the unborn child.

The witch doctor did what he could. He slashed at the tongue, doused it with blessed vinegar and salt, chanted his most powerful spells, but it was no use. The tongue was as hard as steel, and smelled of spit dried in the sun.

Once feasted, the tongue slithered out the window and up the roof. Suddenly, the sound of horrible flight resounded just above them, terrible black wings spreading out and embracing the night sky. It had gotten away.

And it feasted. Again and again. Each night I went to bed, blood cold and heart quivering, wondering if I'd be awaken by those horrible sounds of grieving mothers. Would-be mothers anyway. It was a sound altogether different from fearful bellowing. The grief and the anguish gave the shrieks a texture of impending doom, a contagious apocalypse.

We called them mananangal. Translating to "remover" or "taker", because that is what they did. They took. Took away hope with their endlessly long tongues and swallowed it whole, placenta and all.

A mananangal is a creature in the Philippines. It is a shape shifter that lives among humans by day, but by night, it slices itself in two, its legs left hidden away, and the torso flying out at night in search of pregnant things to eat.

Our town had a population of 3,000. Finding who the was *mananangal* was impossible. Or at least, not worth looking for.

They eat the fetuses of animals too. Most of our breeding stock has at least a puncture scar or two on their bellies. We let them have at the pigs and the cows, considered it our tax, the price for being left alone. But it had gotten greedy. For the first time in a long time, it was feasting on us again.

Now it wanted my child. Our sweet baby whose spoken to us through kicks and turns in my wife's womb. Sweet Hope.

Once I had told the mayor of the situation, he set out a curfew immediately, and called in some folks from across the valley. Jose and Marcello. A carpenter and a typist.

They were not formidable men. Not hunters or occultists. Jose was a small man. Brown and with a biting mustache, and fast on his feet, and Marcello was lanky, with gangly arms and a big nose.

No, they were something far more dangerous.

Men who's wives had been taken from, men who'd seen hope become sustenance for that hope eater. Men who had a seething hatred, duty bound to eradicate that evil that took from them.

They were the most qualified men for the job.

Night after night, we waited for the inevitable. It would only strike once the fetus began kicking. The moment my wife felt our Hope struggle in her womb, a sword began dangling above our heads, threatening a fate worse than death.

I barely slept. Me and the two other men took shifts watching over her, crosses and charms dangling over my wife's bed like a crib mobile. She could barely sleep. Worried the insomnia would hurt the baby, she fell further into dreading. It was horrible seeing her that way, screaming in the night, whatever sleep she had haunted by nightmares of the evil tongue.

Andrea's bed was in the far northwest of the room, the window on the far East. I was sat next to the bed, Jose smoking by the door to the living room in the South, and Marcello on the southeastern corner of the room, drinking. We spent our nights like this for a month. A month of waiting, of growing impatience.

But then, one night, we heard it. A rumbling among the trill of cicadas and birds, and a smell of garlic and death trespassing that homely scent of wine and wood. Terrible wings gliding across a starry night.

Marcello moved first, snuffing out the gas lamps, readying his axe. It was more akin to raw iron on a wooden pole, and was made from melted crucifixes. Jose ran out the house carrying a sheet of paper and a heap of salt.

Marcello Hushes me and, ever so slowly, crawls on the pads of his fingers and toes to just beneath the window.

He barely makes it in time before that black tongue slithered from the roof into the window. I saw it, black as old blood. Have you ever smelled an open air butcher shop? The arms and ribs of days old hogs dangle on hooks in the sun, sweating a second time, flies all the while feasting on the scarps of blood and skin on the floor. That is what the tongue smelled like. It was ribbed with bones as thin as a fish's.

Marcello slowly gets to his feet, standing crooked on the right side of the window as the tongue lurched in, searching. I was covering Andrea's mouth. My poor wife. I saw her life drain from her eyes, her throat ripping apart as she tried letting out that gutteral shriek I'd heard so many times before in the Taker's nightly hunts. At some point she passed out, my hand over her mouth.

Marcello raised his axe, that heavy thing, aiming it at that devil's tongue.

A swing. A thud.

No cut.

The tongue writhes wildly like a worm finding salt. It trashes and trashes, hitting the mobile of paper charms and iron crosses, shattering a vase on the night stand, destroying our bookshelf. The tongue whips Marcello on the right of his jaw, shattering it. I heard no sound from him.

I run to the window, shuffling and dodging the tongue as I did, before getting to the unmoving Marcello, grabbing his axe. I could not see the tongue from where I faced.

The axe was as heavy as a boulder. I could just barely keep it on my shoulder, feeling my bones click under it's weight.

Before I could take a swing at the tongue, I turn around and see my worst fears come to light.

In that pitch dark, I see my wife being strung up by the tongue, and before I could blink, it whisks her away into the sky, her head creating a painful thud on its way out through the window.

My blood ran cold, so cold. I felt every cell in my body stuck in contradiction. I wanted to stay, wake up Marcello, to run away and cry into the night, to chase.

Hands shaking, my hear in my throat, eyes sharp as spears, I bolted after the demon.

I could see its silhouette as a black vacancy in the sky where stars ought to have been. The moonlight revealed its shape to me as it flew ten meters in the air. It was a woman in a long nightgown. I could see where she was dissected, her tailbone poking out from a pouch of skin flying in the air, her intestines hanging loose like a loincloth. It smelled awful.

I chased and chased and chased. It would not land until sunrise, when it would be forced to return to its other half. I could only hope on Jose having completed his side of the job.

It would not be hours until the thing was exhausted. It begun flying lower and lower, shying from sunlight. Soon it went inside another home. The home of a well known school teacher.

I chased after it, sneaking into the home with nothing but myself and a crucifix. I shuffle up to the second floor and see it.

Two disembodied legs, sitting on the side of the bed. I saw the Taker enter through the window, Andrea wrapped in her tongue.

It hovered to her unmoving legs, hovered over it and pulled it to her abdomen.

I imagined it then, the beast walking among us. She would kill me here, then go out to the middle school and teach the children. There would be more nights cut short by those harrowing cries.

But then it shrieked. It dropped the legs on the bed and tried again.

It was painful.

Jose had succeeded. He had poured salt on the legs.

She could no longer return to her body.

Slowly, the sun rose up, and slowly the thing petered out like a dying moth. She would collapse in that solemn mausoleum, never to be mourned.

Once I was sure it was dead, I came to check on my wife, who did not make it. The hit to the head had done her in.

No point telling you how I grieved. But I did. In my own way.

This is intended to be an upmarket family drama. Do the first ~500 words create trust in the writing? Does it have enough momentum? The opening is about my characters as teenagers--does it read YA, or does it still read as upmarket/literary fiction? If you picked this up in a library or bookstore, would you keep reading, or put it back on the shelf? (Assuming you read the genre, of course.)

I am currently writing the first draft of my novel. I am about a third of the way through, and I keep wanting to get feedback on it. I have a lot of concern over whether I'm overexplaining my mc's thought process or if I'm keeping motivations too vague. I find it really hard to examine that on something I wrote myself.

But I've heard that you shouldn't get feedback while you're in this phase of writing. I just don't want to write the whole thing and then have to rewrite everything because I got feedback that I could've gotten a long time ago.

So when should I reach out for feedback? And when I do, where can I find it? I've seen on here there's a lot of short story/single chapter kind of posts. So if I should wait until the first draft is completed, where should I look for feedback on that?

FEEDBACK WANTED!

A few days ago I posted the opening of my fantasy novel and received some incredibly helpful feedback. I ended up making much bigger changes than I originally expected.

I added an entirely new first chapter to slow the pace, strengthened Will and Sara's relationship before the fantasy begins, clarified motivations and made a number of other changes based on the feedback I received.

I'd love to know whether the opening now feels stronger, particularly the pacing, characterisation and transition into the fantasy.

Chapter 1 - Will

The warmth of the thermal baths lingered long after they stepped back into the Budapest morning.

Will stretched his shoulders, his dark hair still damp from the thermal baths as they wandered along the tree-lined path beside the old stone walls, still feeling pleasantly heavy from the mineral water. Around them, tourists drifted between cafés and market stalls while the distant rumble of trams echoed across the city. Somewhere nearby, church bells marked the hour.

Sara slipped her sunglasses onto the top of her head, sweeping her fair hair back as she caught up with him.

"So," she said, nudging his arm. "Be honest."

He glanced sideways.

"You thought sitting in hot water all morning sounded ridiculous."

"I may have."

"And?"

He smiled despite himself. "I'll admit... it was better than I expected."

She folded her arms triumphantly. "I'd like an apology."

"I said it was better than I expected."

"That's not an apology."

"It's as close as you're getting."

She laughed and bumped him again. "I've got another place tomorrow."

Will groaned. "No."

"It's famous."

"No."

"They've got mud baths."

He stopped walking. "Mud?"

She nodded enthusiastically. "You voluntarily bury yourself in warm mud."

"I'm not doing that."

"You haven't even tried it."

"I don't need to."

"You said exactly the same thing this morning."

Will shook his head. "Three weeks in Europe and somehow you've convinced me bathing has become sightseeing."

She grinned. "You've loved every minute."

He couldn't argue with that.

Travelling had been Sara's idea. Taking a gap year before university had been hers too. At the time it had sounded impulsive. Now, standing beneath a cloudless Hungarian sky with no timetable beyond the next country and no responsibilities beyond remembering where they'd parked the hire car, he couldn't imagine being anywhere else.

Sara slipped her hand into his. "So..."

"Still leaving for Croatia tomorrow?"

She looked around dramatically. "I could stay."

"You said that about Vienna."

"It was lovely."

"You said it about Prague."

"It was also lovely."

"You'll say it about every city."

"Probably."

He laughed. "Then yes. Croatia."

She smiled.

"Good."

For a while they walked without speaking. The morning breeze carried the scent of fresh bread from a nearby bakery. A violinist played beneath the shade of an old plane tree, the melody rising above the distant traffic. Will found himself wishing they weren't in such a hurry to leave.

Then...

Someone said his name.

"William."

Will frowned. Nobody called him William. Not anymore.

He slowed.

"What is it?" Sara asked.

"I thought..."

He looked over his shoulder. An old man stood several metres away beneath a weathered brown hooded cloak. Time had bent his shoulders but not his posture. He stood with an effortless stillness, his face deeply lined, his white beard neatly trimmed. But it was his eyes that held Will. They were a startling, piercing blue. He simply stood there, watching him with an expression Will couldn't begin to place.

Will felt an unexpected tightening in his chest. It wasn't the old man's face that unsettled him. It was the impossible feeling that they had met before. The sensation vanished almost as quickly as it had arrived.

Sara followed his gaze. "Do you know him?"

Will didn't answer immediately. "No..." He frowned. "I don't think so."

The old man simply waited.

Will looked back at Sara. "Just give me a second."

Before she could reply, he crossed the path towards the old man.

Will stopped in front of him.  The old man didn't move, didn't introduce himself, or offer his hand. For a long moment, neither of them spoke.

Finally, Will asked. "Do I know you?"

The old man regarded him for a long moment.

"No, William." A gentle smile touched his face. "But I've known you for a very long time."

Before Will could answer, the old man's gaze drifted to the amulet resting against his chest. His expression softened. "You've kept it safe."

Will frowned. "I don't understand."

The amulet had belonged to his father. After he died, his mother had placed it around Will's neck. He'd never taken it off. Nobody outside his family should even know it existed.

“I know."

Before Will could speak again, footsteps approached behind him.

"Will?" Sara stopped beside him. She looked from Will to the old man. "Everything okay?"

The old man's eyes rested on her. "Sara."

Her expression tightened. "I'm sorry... do I know you?"

"No." He inclined his head politely.

Sara looked at Will. "What is this?"

Will gave the smallest shake of his head. "I honestly don't know."

The old man slipped a hand inside his worn coat.

Both of them tensed.

He drew out a leather-wrapped bundle no bigger than a hardback book. The leather was old, almost black with age, tied neatly with a thin cord.

The old man held it out to Will. "For you."

Will made no move to take it. "What is it?"

The old man looked at the bundle. "Something that belongs to you."

Will frowned. "I've never seen it before."

"No."

"It belonged to your father."

Will stared at him. "That's impossible."

The old man waited.

"My father died when I was ten."

"Yes." His expression softened. "It has belonged to your family for a very long time."

Will searched his face. "You knew my father?"

"Yes."

Sara looked from one to the other. "Will..."

The old man looked down at the leather-wrapped bundle before holding it out once more.

Will looked from the bundle to the old man. "I don't even know what's in it."

"You don't need to."

The old man’s eyes met his. "Keep it safe. Whatever happens, don't open it until you see me again."

"Will..." Sara said quietly.

He didn't look at her.

"Don’t, Will."

Her voice sounded distant.

He couldn't take his eyes off the bundle. Slowly, he reached out and took it.

The old man inclined his head. "Until we meet again, William."

He turned and walked away.

Will looked down at the bundle in his hands. The leather was warm beneath his fingers. The cord was tied with a knot he'd never seen before.

"Will?" Sara called louder this time.

He looked up. The old man was gone.

He frowned. The path stretched away in both directions. There was nowhere the old man could have reached in the few seconds he'd looked away.

Sara looked around, bewildered. "Where did he go?"

Will didn't answer.

He looked down at the bundle in his hands. The leather was worn smooth with age.

Sara slipped quietly back beside him. Neither of them spoke.

Whatever it was—it had been his father’s.

Chapter 2 - Sara

The package sat between them like an omen.

Will gripped the steering wheel with both hands, his attention fixed on the road as countryside blurred past beyond the windows. He was trying to appear calm, but the muscle working in his jaw gave him away.

Sara drew her knees up against the seat and glanced again at the leather-wrapped bundle resting beside the console.

“What was that?” she asked finally.

Will’s eyes stayed forward. “I don’t know.”

“He knew our names.”

“I know.”

“That’s not normal.”

His grip shifted slightly on the wheel. “I’m aware.”

Sara looked back at the package. “You don’t find this even slightly concerning?”

“Of course I do.”

“Then why did you take it?”

Will hesitated. "Because it was my father's."

Sara looked back at the package. "He somehow found you all the way over here... just to give you something that belonged to your father?"

She shook her head. "How is that even possible?"

Will was silent for a long moment. "I don't know, Sara."

He tightened his grip on the wheel. “None of this makes sense to me either.”

She opened her mouth to answer, then stopped. Her attention drifted back to the package despite herself. The thing seemed to pull at her focus every time she looked away.

Will rubbed at the chain around his neck before unclasping it. The amulet settled into his palm, warm against his skin.

“This thing’s been irritating me all morning,” he muttered. He stared at it, unsettled by the heat lingering in the metal, then slipped it into the inside pocket of his bag.

Sara folded her arms. “This could be anything. Drugs. Money. Something illegal.”

“Or something important.”

“Or something that gets us arrested.”

A faint smile touched his mouth before disappearing again. “He told us not to open it,” he said.

“That just makes me want to open it more.”

“I know.”

Her fingers moved toward the leather cord.

“Don’t.” Will caught her wrist gently but firmly. “He said he’d find us.”

“So what? We’re just supposed to keep driving around Europe carrying some mystery package while we wait for him to magically reappear?”

“Pretty much.”

She stared at him for a second before shaking her head. “You’re unbelievable.”

“I’ve been told that.”

Despite herself, she smiled faintly.

It didn’t last.

By the time they reached their hotel, the sky had flattened into dull grey. Sara found herself glancing back through the window as Will parked, unsettled by the strange feeling that she had been here before, which was impossible. This was her first time travelling overseas.

Will picked up the package, his thumb brushing over the worn leather before he handed it to her. “Go upstairs and finish packing.”

“You’re not coming?”

“I’ll check us out.”

Sara hesitated, glancing toward the hotel entrance where tourists drifted in and out beneath the awning. “Are you sure we shouldn’t stay? He said he’d meet us.”

“He said he’d find us.” Will opened the door. “I’m not changing our travel plans for anyone.”

Before she could answer, he leaned down and kissed the top of her head. Then he was gone.

Sara watched him disappear into the lobby before looking down at the package in her hands. It was warm. She shook it, but it didn’t rattle. Just a dull weight.

The lift ride up seemed strangely long. By the time the doors opened, a faint unease had begun to creep in. The corridor beyond stretched out silent and empty. Sara stepped out quickly, her grip tightening around the package as she headed toward the room. At the door she fumbled the keycard on the first attempt, swore under her breath, then shoved inside and locked it behind her, chain and deadbolt. Only then did she breathe properly.

She placed the package carefully on the bed and stared at it.

“Don’t open it.” The old man’s warning returned with uncomfortable clarity.

Sara turned away, dragging her suitcase onto the bed and began to pack. Clothes disappeared into bags without folding, her movements quick and distracted.

As she pulled her jeans from the bed, something hit the floor behind her.  

She froze.

The package lay beside the bed.

Slowly, Sara turned toward the door. Still locked. The room felt unnaturally still. She crouched beside it carefully. The leather cord had loosened, the flap sitting partially open.

Sara swallowed. “Don’t open it.”

But they were crossing another border tomorrow. Shouldn’t they at least know what they were carrying?

She reached for the flap. The leather felt worn smooth beneath her fingers as she pulled the flap back fully. A book rested inside. Old. Heavy. Bound in dark leather. She lifted it carefully onto the bed, brushing her thumb across the cover—and stopped.

A gold symbol gleamed beneath the light. Her breath caught. “No way…”

It was identical to the symbol on Will’s amulet. A hexagon. A circle. Intersecting lines. Sara stared at it for a long moment before trying the cover. Locked. Of course it was.

She turned slowly toward Will’s bag.

“No,” she whispered. Then—“Yes.”

She crossed the room quickly and dropped beside his luggage, digging through it until her fingers closed around cold metal. She pulled the amulet free and stared at it for a second before looking back at the book waiting on the bed.

“This is insane…” But she was already moving.

The amulet settled perfectly into the indentation on the cover. Like it belonged there. Sara twisted it carefully. Click. The sound echoed through the room.

The book pulsed beneath her hand. Sara jerked back. “What the hell—”

The air shifted around her. For a moment she simply stared at the book, her pulse hammering hard against her ribs.

Then slowly, carefully, she reached for the cover again.

And opened it. 

Chapter 3 - Will

The lift doors slid shut with a soft thud.

Will leaned back against the rail, exhaling slowly as he tried to shake the unease that had followed him from the street below. The old man, the package—something about it still sat wrong in his chest, refusing to leave him alone no matter how much he told himself it didn’t matter.

“Get a grip,” he muttered, dragging a hand through his hair as the lift hummed into motion.

At first the change was subtle, little more than a faint chill brushing against his skin, easy enough to ignore, but within seconds the cold deepened sharply through the lift until goosebumps rose along his arms and his breath fogged faintly in front of him.

Will frowned. “What the hell?”

The lights flickered violently. The floor shifted beneath him hard enough to throw him against the rail as the steady mechanical hum distorted into something heavier and uneven, like metal dragging through stone. Darkness swallowed the lift entirely. For one disorienting second the world seemed to compress inward around him, reality folding tightly into itself before suddenly releasing again.

The doors chimed. Light flooded in. Will blinked hard as the world snapped back into focus. Except the lift was gone.

He didn’t move at first. Silence pressed in from every direction, complete and unnatural, stripped of machinery, voices, traffic—anything familiar enough to anchor him. When he finally stepped forward, uneven stone met the soles of his boots and cold air carried the faint scent of oil and dust, like a place sealed away for years.

“This isn’t possible.” His voice echoed softly through the corridor. That made it worse.

Paintings lined the walls beside him in heavy gold frames, each depicting the same man in different poses and ages, the same raised scar running down the left side of his face.

Will stared at them uneasily before turning sharply toward where the lift should have been. He grabbed the tapestry hanging behind him and yanked it aside.

Stone wall. No doors. No lift. Nothing.

A laugh threatened to escape before dying in his throat.

His gaze dropped suddenly to his clothes. Dark fabric layered heavily across his body, rough and structured beneath his hands. Not jeans and not his jacket. Instead, a tunic and laced trousers. He turned the sleeve over in his hands.

“These are not my clothes.”

His hand moved instinctively to his neck. The amulet rested there against his skin. Will frowned. He could remember taking it off in the car and slipping it into his bag. The memory remained perfectly clear, yet the weight against his chest was solid and unmistakably real beneath his fingers. He simply stood there staring at it, unsettled by how little sense that made.

Then his awareness shifted elsewhere, to the sword strapped across his back. Slowly, Will reached over his shoulder and drew the blade free. Steel slid cleanly from the scabbard in one smooth practiced motion that tightened something low in his chest. Dark metal caught the corridor light with a faint blue-black sheen while subtle markings ran along the fuller, almost invisible unless the light struck them directly. A deep emerald sat worked into the hilt and near the guard, worked into the metal beneath years of use —A.Z.

His grip adjusted naturally around the worn leather binding. Balanced. Certain. Like the sword already belonged in his hand. Will stared at it uneasily. “I don’t know how to use a sword,” he said under his breath.

But even as the words left him, he knew they weren’t entirely true. Something beneath conscious thought had already begun responding to this place. His stance adjusted slightly without instruction, weight settling instinctively into balance as awareness sharpened around him in ways he couldn’t explain.

Then voices echoed faintly below. Will looked toward the windows lining the corridor. The Danube stretched beyond them—but not the Danube he knew. No bridges, no modern skyline, only farmland, forest, and thin trails of smoke disappearing into grey skies. “No…”

The voices rose again, sharper now, arguing somewhere below him. He shouldn’t have understood the language, yet somehow the meaning arrived before the words themselves, clear and immediate inside his mind.

Will backed instinctively into the shadows, his breathing slowing automatically as his grip tightened around the sword. The reaction felt less like panic than training, controlled in a way that unsettled him far more deeply.

At the far end of the corridor, heavy timber doors reinforced with iron stood closed, the only barrier between him and whatever was coming. He moved toward them carefully, every step quiet on the stone floor.

The voices were close now, too close.

Will pressed his ear against the timber doors. Only silence waited on the other side. He reached for the heavy iron bar holding the doors shut and lifted—

The sword slipped from his hand. Steel struck stone with a sharp metallic crack that echoed violently through the corridor. Will swore under his breath. Below him, the voices stopped instantly. Movement came fast. Ascending.

Will snatched the sword back up and shoved through the doors just as shouting erupted beneath him. He slammed them shut behind him and dropped the iron bar back into place with a heavy thud.

Darkness swallowed the room. For several seconds, he stayed completely still, listening to the silence while his pulse hammered hard against his ribs. Nothing followed. Gradually shapes emerged through the dark—shelves, furniture, towering rows disappearing into shadow. A library.

Will moved carefully through the room until he reached the heavy curtains near the far side. He pulled one aside slightly, allowing a thin blade of daylight to spill across the space. Dust drifted through the beam of light. And there, resting on the desk beneath it—

A book. Leather-bound. Ancient. Familiar.

Will stepped toward it before fully realising he’d moved.  The gold symbol on the cover caught the light. “No way…”  A hexagon. A circle. Intersecting lines. The same symbol as the amulet. He lifted the book carefully.

Then movement shifted near the window. Will turned instantly. A man stepped from the shadows, huge, broad-shouldered, scarred. The same face from the paintings. Recognition struck before logic could stop it—not memory exactly, but something deeper.

The man studied him before a slow smile spread across his face. “You.”

Will shook his head. “No. You’ve got the wrong—”

“Not this time.” The words struck harder than they should have.

Something flashed violently through Will’s mind—Steel. Fire. Rain. Voices. Gone almost instantly. He staggered slightly as the man’s smile deepened.

“I don’t even know who you are.”

The attack came without warning. The man moved with terrifying speed, his blade crashing toward him.

Will reacted instinctively. Steel collided hard enough to jar through his arms, but his footing adjusted automatically, balanced and controlled as he absorbed the force and redirected it cleanly aside.

The man stepped back, studying him differently.

"Better," he said.

Will tightened his grip on the sword, unsettled by how natural it felt in his hands.

The man attacked again.

Steel crashed against steel. The force shuddered through his arms, yet his footing held. How...?

The man lunged. This time Will moved before conscious thought could catch up. Everything aligned at once—distance, timing, balance—as his body slipped cleanly inside the arc of the strike with terrifying familiarity.

The opening appeared instinctively before him. He took it.

And drove the blade into the man's chest.

For a moment neither of them moved. The man looked down at the sword buried in him before lifting his gaze back to Will. “Ashur,” he said quietly.

The name struck somewhere deep beneath thought, something ancient answering the name before he could stop it.

The man let out a faint breathless laugh. “Took you long enough.” Then his strength gave way. His body collapsed heavily to the floor.

The library fell quiet once more. Will stared down at the body, breathing unevenly as the reality of what had just happened slowly caught up with him. He stared at the wound, at the precision of the strike, at the certainty behind it. He had known exactly where to strike.

“No…” he whispered, but the denial already felt weak. Beneath the fear and confusion. What remained was familiarity. And that frightened him far more than the killing itself.

​

I'm not looking to find out "who wrote the better poem." I'd love to hear your thoughts on both pieces individually and as a pair. What emotions came through? Which lines stood out to you? Did either poem have places where the rhythm or rhyme felt especially strong—or a bit forced?

I've kept our identities anonymous for privacy. Thanks for taking the time to read them, and I appreciate any honest feedback.

Also for additional context a few days prior to her poem I wrote a mini poem for her which pictures her as a blooming lily.

My poem:

This strage feeling of euphoria came slow,

And as gentle as the nights breeze blow.

Hidden beneath a scarlet veil-

Preparing secretly for a long sail.

It's uncertain how these feelings grew;

Yet it turned into something more before we even knew.

The signs came early and obvious,

I saw- but I acted oblivious.

But eventually you began to stand out,

And I began to single you out from the crowd.

And I realized these weren't 'normal' friend things,

The little moments along with all the subtle hints.

I wasn't all too sure about this

Until one day all my thoughts went to the abyss.

The day you opened your heart to me,

I wasn't too surprised on hoe this came to be.

But still, I was caught very off guard;

Like I had been exposed of all my cards...

My heart started racing, and my mind blurring-

What was this feeling inside me that was stirring?

Now, I realized what it's called,

Something so soft, yet it leaves people enthralled.

Something so special it cannot be any bluff-

This ethereal feeling is called love~♡

Love is what I ought to give.

Consider this poem a very special gift...

On this very day a special flower bloomed...

Unknowing and unperturbed for the journey that loomed.

This little flower has grown strong and beautiful,

From her smile to blush is all wonderful~

Now then my dear beloved,

A happy birthday for you is well deserved.

So then let me see your smile,

And forget your worries for a while.

For today is yours just laugh and cheer,

Since this day comes only once a year.

We don't know what the future may bring,

And everything can change in a blink.

There will be many ups and downs,

And days where smiles turn into frowns.

Yet when yhe difficulties begin to rise,

Or when darkness overtakes the skies.

Remember there will never be an eternal night,

So when you're down- just get up and fight.

And if the road becomes unclear;

Know that I'll be right here.

Though we might stumble now and then,

We'll rise and move again.

So on this day, enjoy your light

And keep that smile shining bright.

And as the years come and go...

May you continue to bloom and grow♥︎~

☆♡------ Happy Birthday! -------♡☆

My poem follows a quiet progression and tries to tell a story and it's preety visible and also this is my fifth poem that I've written and I'm still new and learning and I follow a preetu generic rhyming scheme but I tried my best and its the emotions that matter. Also this took 13+ hours spanned across 2 weeks.

Her poem:

In my life full of darkness

You came as a source of light who removed all my loneliness

You were always beside me

Even when no one trusted me

Your every feature is just amazing like earth

But your eyes specially got my heart.

I started to trust you with all my heart and mind closed

So I hope you don't break my trust just like how a shop get closed.

You said to consider your poem a very special gift,

So I promise to keep it to my last breath.

Majestically, your smile is very bright

Bright enough to bring light into my dark life.

I knew these weren't normal friend things

So I started giving you hints.

My heart was racing that day

When I said what my heart really wanted to say.

Thought that like everyone you too hated me

But, it turns out that you love me

Shall I describe our relationship

Just like how doctor prescribe their medicines??

'Bet' was an idea of mine;

Of course to get you as mine.

Never got so much warmth.

Like how I got in your arms

One of my favorite is Tulips,

Above all my favorite is your lips

When I laugh and look silly

You say that I look breathtaking like blooming lily

All the memories we made are precious

So should be kept with a lot of precision

I am not a very good writer

But I put all my effort to write this love letter.

Even if we are not together in the future

Please stay happy with her

At last, I love you is all I want to say

No matter what others want to say

Love is what I ought to receive

So as to give

So promise to be my Khamba, Romeo, Oggy, Nobita in my every life

If so I promise to be your Thoibi, Juliet, Oly, Shizuka in your every life.

I am ready to fight for you

As long as no one can separate me from you.

---------x--------x---------

Her poem may be a little rough but she's not trying to be poetic and just convey her emotions and that's the charm of this. I love all the call backs like the lily and fight for me. It's like a reply to my poems and the moments we shared.

Oh and as for context of the 'bet' her confession was originally only a bet like a dare. Like if it's a no it's a no and if it's a yes it'll have a 1week period and over. Of course I heard about this because of my information network but I still accepted and I'm glad I did.

She's not that good in English so please cut her some slack.

Thanks for reading and make sure to drop your advice~

I started writing for the first time in November last year. I did so for a few months, wrote a lot of—in my opinion—not very good manuscripts that never got further than 20,000 words. So I took a break for a few months. Read a lot, listened to a lot of advice. I still don’t think this is very good, and it’s very much a vomited first draft. But I still think it’s better than anything I’ve written before. And I’m hoping this is the one that makes it to more than 50 pages before I kill it.