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The Halo Effect

I_M_Selene
Noel Arden just wants to disappear. As a member of a prestigious and influential family known for producing powerful espers and guides, Noel’s D classification is an embarrassment. Determined to work as a guide despite his father’s opposition, Noel spends his days in the D-suite of Halo, the largest, most successful Paradigm agency in the country, keeping his head down and enduring the less pleasant aspects of his job. It’s not a bad life; he likes his coworkers, he doesn’t have to rely on his increasingly hostile father, and he’s almost never deployed to Fray sites. As long as he steers clear of his S-class esper half-brother, he can just melt into the background and pretend to be a normal, low level guide, just one of hundreds in Halo’s bottom ranks. Invisible and unremarkable. Exactly the way he wants it. Then an emergency situation during an unexpected deployment forces Noel to shatter his quiet, boring life with his own hands and thrusts him directly into the notoriety he’s worked so hard to avoid. When he witnesses Jade Ransom, Halo’s star esper and one of the only S-classes in the country, melting down from corruption overload, Noel has no choice but to use the ability he swore to never reveal in order to save both Jade and the city from destruction. Jade, desperate after a life of guiding intolerance, latches onto Noel as the only guide he’s ever properly synced with and insists on being exclusive partners. With his back against the wall and his pesky conscience whispering in his ear, Noel agrees. Struggling to balance his secret, his normal job, and his connection to Jade, Noel finds the stable life he worked so hard to build crumbling around him. And as he and Jade grow closer, Noel has to reckon with the vast differences between them and decide if he’s prepared to burn himself out just to let Jade shine. #GUIDEVERSE #ESPER #SLOWBURN [ADULT LANGUAGE AND SUBJECT MATTER] *original cover by me *character portraits commissioned
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#000000

Elian Voss makes things look perfect on screens. In 2240, that means designing the digital layer woven into the fabric of reality itself, the invisible architecture that makes an interplanetary civilization feel livable, feel *human*. He is exceptional at his job. He is forgettable everywhere else. Then one morning, without warning, the color black stops existing. Not darkness. Not shadow. Not the concept of absence. The color itself. Every screen across Earth and its eleven inhabited stations throws the same silent error. `#000000` returns null. Scientists dedicate entire processing networks to finding an answer. Governments convene. Religions overflow. The world collectively screams into a void that no longer has a color. Elian stares at his code and thinks it looks *edited.* Not broken. Not corrupted. Clean. Like a single line was removed by someone who knew exactly what they were doing and didn't feel the need to leave a note. So he starts digging. Not out of heroism. Simply because he is the kind of man who cannot leave a bug alone at 3 AM. What he finds will not restore the color. It will not save anything. It will only show one exhausted programmer, in a civilization that can navigate asteroid belts and simulate ecosystems, exactly how mistaken they have been about who is doing the navigating. The color doesn't come back. Elian closes the file. Opens a new one. Gets back to work. "Some bugs were never meant to be fixed. Some were meant to be delivered." #000000 is a sci-fi story with 3 books Book 1: The color of what we built Book 2: The color of where we're going Book 3: The color of what comes next The story itself questions the human fragility that no matter how advance humanity progressed, a single instance can change everything humans knew, their foundation and the way of how humanity perceive life.
ToastedBeans · 8.5k Views

Starting in Terra as Ryougi Shiki

Death came swiftly. A truck, a moment of impact, then nothing. What came after was unexpected. A god, bored and seeking entertainment, offered three wishes and a new world to explore. The choice seemed simple at the time. Ryougi Shiki's template, complete with the Mystic Eyes of Death Perception that see the end of all things. A gacha system rewarding interference with fate through random legendary weapons. And time, endless time, to grow strong enough to survive. Then came Terra. A world of mobile cities fleeing natural disasters. Of crystalline infection that grants power while slowly killing its hosts. Of conflicts between the infected and those who fear them, violence born from desperation on both sides. I arrived knowing nothing. No context, no preparation, just the ability to see death lines on everything and a tanto at my hip. The first days taught hard lessons. That strength alone means nothing without understanding. That people die easily when you know exactly where to cut. That some threats operate on scales beyond mortal comprehension. Then I met Rhodes Island. A pharmaceutical company fighting an impossible war against disease and prejudice. Operators who wielded power with purpose rather than abandon. And a mysterious Doctor who recognized what I was the moment we met. They revealed truths I hadn't considered. That Terra had changed, its timeline fractured by the arrival of others like us. That a goddess calling herself the Lion King conquered an entire nation in three days with divine authority blazing. That more entities from impossible places were appearing, each with their own agendas and power. But simple survival was never the goal. Terra bleeds. The infected suffer systemic oppression. Reunion fights with terrorism born from justified rage. Nations prepare for wars that will kill millions. And somewhere above it all, a goddess prepares continental conquest while treating mortal life as irrelevant to divine purpose. The Mystic Eyes of Death Perception show me how everything ends. Lines traced across reality itself, revealing mortality in all things. Even gods can die if you know where to cut. The question is whether I can grow strong enough, fast enough, to reach those lines before Terra drowns in violence. This is the story of an assassin learning to protect instead of kill. Of gamers coordinating impossible operations with incomplete information. Of a world caught between conflicts it understands and forces it doesn't. The god wanted entertainment. They're going to get a show they'll never forget. Because I didn't come to Terra to watch it burn. I came to see if fiction made real can be saved by someone who shouldn't exist. And I have all the time in the world to find out. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- This is my own AU so don't be surprised if there are characters in a different place at a different time than the actual plot after all in this story, there is no real, no script. They all have their own plans. Their own goals. But in front of the God's sandbox? All is equal.
ToastedBeans · 76.4k Views