Cherreads

Spilling Waters

FrancesEby234
Catherina has spent her entire life learning how to disappear. In a home where love feels conditional and silence is safer than expression, she grows up navigating the sharp edges of neglect, comparison, and quiet rejection. Her parents are quick to correct but slow to care. Her brothers demand strength she cannot always give. Her sister moves freely, untouched by consequence, while Catherina carries the weight of expectations no one acknowledges. At school, she tries to build a different version of herself, disciplined, capable, invisible, but even there, the cracks follow. No matter how hard she tries, she is never quite enough. Not for her family. Not for the world. And eventually, not even for herself. Until one day, something in her breaks. In a moment of overwhelming pain, Catherina makes a desperate wish, to be free from the life that has never truly seen her. But the wish is not just heard, it is granted. She awakens in a world that feels both familiar and deeply unsettling. Everything is the same… except for one thing. No one knows who she is. Now living as a stranger in the life she once struggled to belong to, Catherina is given something she has never had before: the chance to be seen. Her family, unchanged in face but altered in perception welcomes her with a warmth she has never experienced. They listen. They notice. They care. For the first time, she feels what it is like to matter. But comfort comes with a quiet cost. As days pass, Catherina begins to notice subtle fractures beneath the surface of this new reality. The love she receives is real but it is not meant for her. It belongs to the person they believe her to be. And the longer she stays, the more she feels herself slipping further away from the girl she once was. Memories blur. Identity fades. And a haunting truth begins to emerge: To be loved here, she must remain someone else. Caught between a painful past that never embraced her and a beautiful illusion that demands her erasure, Catherina is forced to confront the question she has avoided her entire life: Is being loved worth losing yourself? As the world around her begins to shift in ways she cannot control, and the consequences of her wish tighten their grip, Catherina must make an impossible choice...cling to the comfort of being wanted, or return to a reality where she must learn to want herself. Because in the end, the greatest battle she will ever fight is not for her family’s love— …but for her own.
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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