A Record of Ash & Ruin: The Grieving Lands - Chapter 21Book 2: : Portents

“THE NEW GATE”, an online game that trapped its players and turned into a death game, was now releasing the thousands of players that had been dragged into it, thanks to the efforts of Shin, one of the most powerful players. But after having defeated the last boss and freed everyone, he was swallowed up by a strange light and found himself inside the game world 500 years in the future and unable to leave.

After being torn from the only life she knew, 16-year-old Margo is forced into a new home with strangers who call themselves her parents. Haunted by memories of her past and consumed by feelings of isolation, she struggles to adapt to her unfamiliar surroundings. School offers little relief—until she meets Lucien, a mysterious boy who appears just when she needs a friend the most.Gabriel is everything Margo needs: kind, attentive, and always ready to whisk her away from her troubles. Each night, he invites her to secret places—an abandoned playground, a fog-choked garden, a crumbling train station at the edge of town—each more unsettling than the last. Yet with every chilling rendezvous, Margo feels more alive... more seen.But something isn’t right. Gabriel never comes to school during the day. Her adoptive parents never see him. And when they catch her talking to thin air, their concern deepens into fear. They say Gabriel isn't real—that he’s a figment of her imagination. Margo wants to believe them, but Gabriel feels real. More real than anything else in her life.As the nights grow colder and more twisted, Gabriel’s true nature begins to surface. Shadows move where they shouldn’t. Time warps in his presence. And the places they visit seem to echo with whispers from another world. Margo is forced to ask herself: Who—or what—is Gabriel? Why does he only want her? And what will happen on the final night he asks her to come with him?As the line between reality and delusion begins to crumble, Margo must make an impossible choice: stay in a world where she feels loved, or return to one that barely feels real.But one thing is certain—some friendships never let go.

What if your own father and his mistress were behind your mother’s death? What if you were about to be sold if to a scumbag?

In the eyes of Chi Zuxu, Chi Yi is a typical delinquent with the three big ‘NOs’— no morals, no virtues, no principles. To her, though, he is a classic baddie who is heartless, soulless, and inhuman.

After the girl breaks and climbs through his glass window on the second story, she peeps at him with an innocent demeanor.

“Chi Zuxu, lend me the other half of your bed!” she wolf-whistles at him blatantly. The man admonishes with a scowl, “Chi Yi, aren’t you shameless!”

Inside the cinema, as Chi Yi’s little hands restlessly grope the man’s body without chagrin, she tells him smilingly, “Chi Zuxu, I want to do bad things with you!” Holding a look of woeful disgrace, he knocks her head. “Chi Yi, aren’t you embarrassed!”

It is a lovely love story between a barefaced and a reticent. But, Mr Reticient, please don’t cry when Miss Barefaced finally slips away.