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The Survivor's Echo

The Survivor's Echo

Gavin

5.0
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10
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I was just another volunteer, living and praying alongside my community, unaware my life was about to shatter despite what I thought were normal interactions with our charismatic leader. Then, on the very first day of the harvest festival, a sudden, horrifying accusation rang out: I was charged with seducing Elijah, the revered leader of our tight-knit community. He stood by, silent and impassive, as the elders dragged me to the center of the congregation, allowing them to string me up for a public whipping, pelt me with stones, brand me with a searing iron, and later, imprison me in a filthy, abandoned cabin where he mercilessly scalded my throat with boiling water. My alleged crime was a twisted atonement for a past life I couldn't even remember, a destiny he claimed we shared, yet his actions felt like a personal hell tailor-made just for me. With my spirit broken but not extinguished, I knew I had to escape this nightmare, even if it meant faking my own death and disappearing without a trace, hoping to reclaim a life free from his suffocating delusion.

Introduction

I was just another volunteer, living and praying alongside my community, unaware my life was about to shatter despite what I thought were normal interactions with our charismatic leader.

Then, on the very first day of the harvest festival, a sudden, horrifying accusation rang out: I was charged with seducing Elijah, the revered leader of our tight-knit community.

He stood by, silent and impassive, as the elders dragged me to the center of the congregation, allowing them to string me up for a public whipping, pelt me with stones, brand me with a searing iron, and later, imprison me in a filthy, abandoned cabin where he mercilessly scalded my throat with boiling water.

My alleged crime was a twisted atonement for a past life I couldn't even remember, a destiny he claimed we shared, yet his actions felt like a personal hell tailor-made just for me.

With my spirit broken but not extinguished, I knew I had to escape this nightmare, even if it meant faking my own death and disappearing without a trace, hoping to reclaim a life free from his suffocating delusion.

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The Unwilling Wife

The Unwilling Wife

Short stories

5.0

The organ music swelled, painting my white wedding dress in shades of blood red. I was marrying Julian Thorne, a man who despised me, believing the lies that had ruined my reputation. This wasn't a marriage; it was a sentence, orchestrated perfectly by my stepsister, Sophia, who had always wanted Julian for herself. Everyone saw Eleanor Vance, the brilliant architect, as the luckiest woman alive, but my heart was a cold stone. As the word "I do" escaped my lips-a whispered surrender-a blinding white light engulfed me. I woke up in my old bedroom, the floral wallpaper still on the walls. My phone read October 12, 2014-ten years ago, the day of my first wedding, the one that never happened. Relief surged through me; I wasn't Julian Thorne's wife. But then dread set in as Sophia's text buzzed on my smaller, older phone: "Julian's family is coming for dinner tonight, you have to make a good impression!" It was all starting tonight, the very dinner where Sophia would introduce me to the Thornes, setting off the chain of events that would lead to my forced marriage. The contempt in Julian's eyes was already there, seeing me as a social climber, exactly the image Sophia had carefully crafted. I was trapped again, a ghost in my own life, burdened by a future I knew was coming: the Thorne family's imminent financial ruin, and my own career sacrificed to support them. But this time, I wasn't the naive girl to be manipulated. I knew all their secrets, and I would not spend another ten years as Eleanor Thorne. I would fight.

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