Snow howled against the mountainside, carried by the wind like knives cutting through the night. The gunfire had stopped some minutes ago, leaving behind only the muffled crunch of boots and the moans of the dying. The Van der Linde gang moved through what was left of the O’Driscoll camp, lanterns bobbing in the dark, searching through bodies and cabins for anything useful — bullets, whiskey, blankets, food. Anything to keep them alive another day in this cursed winter.
The camp outside Atlanta sat uneasy in the stillness of late summer, shadows stretching long across the clearing as the survivors busied themselves with their makeshift chores. Smoke curled lazily from the fire pit, mingling with the smell of ash and sweat, while the constant hum of cicadas filled the silence between voices. Everyone seemed to have a role: gathering firewood, washing clothes in the stream, keeping watch, anything to distract from the gnawing truth of the world falling apart. Everyone but her.
It was the summer after Sirius Black’s fifth year at Hogwarts — the summer he finally did it. He stormed out of Number Twelve Grimmauld Place, slammed the door on his mother’s shrieking portrait, and swore never to go back.
Frank’s been living like a ghost — drifting, hiding in cheap motels, working construction during the day, drinking at night. He tells himself he’s done, but the truth is, he’s restless. He misses the war. He misses having an enemy to punish.
The Shelby mansion was quieter than she had expected. Its wide halls and high windows seemed to swallow sound, leaving only the muffled crackle of the fireplace and the soft noises of a child somewhere upstairs. Most evenings passed the same way: Charles clinging to her skirts, toys scattered across the floor, the weight of a house too large for two people pressing down on her shoulders.
She met him on base, back when she was still green and stumbling her way through medic training. Everyone knew Ghost by reputation—stone-faced, unshakable, a man who carried the weight of too many missions and too many ghosts behind that mask of his. At first, he barely looked her way, dismissing her as another recruit too young to understand the reality of war.
Two weeks earlier, the world had begun to rot. What started as a few scattered reports—an aggressive flu, a handful of violent incidents, a strange fever no doctor could name—unraveled into something far worse. Cities collapsed first, then towns, then the quiet rural places everyone once thought safe. Within days, the infected were no longer patients but predators, walking corpses driven by hunger. The living fled, searching for sanctuary anywhere it might exist.
The clearing is drowned in silence, the air thick with fear. Floodlights burn down on the kneeling survivors, their faces streaked with dirt and tears. Abraham and Glenn lie motionless in the gravel, their blood soaking into the earth — a brutal warning of what happens when Negan makes a point.
It’s the early 1960s, and the world is on the brink of change. Mutants are beginning to appear more frequently, but most of them live in fear, hiding what they are from society. Charles Xavier, a young professor with a brilliant mind and extraordinary telepathic powers, has made it his mission to find these gifted individuals and show them they are not alone.
In the early days of the outbreak, when the world had only just begun to crack, Shane Walsh drove through the quiet streets of King County with a heaviness that felt like it sat inside his bones. Smoke clung to the horizon like a bruise. Radios screamed with emergency bulletins that cut out mid-word, and the world he’d spent his life trying to protect was dissolving into panic and static.
Thunder Bay hides danger beneath wealth, and no one embodies that more than the Horsemen — four powerful men who returned from prison quieter, sharper, and more controlled. Among them, Damon Torrance is the one people fear. While Michael leads, Will charms, and Kai strategizes, Damon dominates through force and unpredictability. His silence is a warning, his presence a threat. Rumors about him follow girls through hallways and parties — stories of pushing boundaries just to watch someone break.
Late one night, in a quiet apartment cluttered with cables, notebooks, and an old laptop held together by sheer willpower, a young coder sat squinting at her screen. She hadn’t meant to break into anything major it was just supposed to be a test.
The camp had settled into a strange, fragile rhythm after a few days, like a breath held just long enough to feel normal. The mornings smelled of damp earth and old pine needles, sunlight filtering through the trees in thin, pale bands. Smoke from last night’s fire still clung faintly to clothes and hair, mixing with sweat, sap, and the quiet fatigue of people who lived without plans beyond the next meal.
Arkham Asylum had always been a place of whispers and locked doors, a fortress for Gotham’s broken minds. She entered it not as a patient, but as a young psychology intern, eager to prove herself in the field’s harshest environment. The assignment was daunting — to assist Arkham’s rising administrator, Dr. Jonathan Crane, in patient evaluations and treatment.
Professor Ferox’s daughter transfers to Hogwarts for her seventh and final year after years of avoiding it, not wanting to live under her father’s shadow or be defined by his reputation. Her arrival sparks immediate attention.
Welton Academy, 1959. A bastion of tradition, discipline, and order. Known as the “best preparatory school in the United States,” Welton prides itself on its four pillars: Tradition, Honor, Discipline, and Excellence. For decades, the school has been exclusively male.
The midday sun hung heavy over the marketplace, turning the metallic roofs and dusty stone streets into a patchwork of harsh light and deep shadow. Crowds pressed together in slow, weaving currents—traders shouting over one another, children darting between stalls, droids humming past with crates stacked high above their heads. It was the kind of noise that lived everywhere on this Outer Rim world, the kind that softened into background static after enough years of hearing it.
Tristan hadn’t cared much for the Romeo and Juliet rehearsals at Chilton. Theater wasn’t his thing — not really — but stirring trouble was. Watching Rory recite lines under the scrutiny of Paris was entertaining enough, but it was Dean’s stiff disapproval that made the whole scene worthwhile. Tristan knew exactly which buttons to push, hinting at the “star-crossed lovers” comparison, letting sly remarks about romance slip in just to watch Dean bristle. It was a game, and he was good at it.
It was the summer after Sirius Black’s fifth year at Hogwarts — the summer he finally did it. He stormed out of Number Twelve Grimmauld Place, slammed the door on his mother’s shrieking portrait, and swore never to go back.
She comes back to Hawkins after a year away, the scholarship letter still folded and worn in her bag like proof that she’d really escaped this place, if only for a while. Studying abroad had kept her oceans away from home, busy and distracted enough not to miss much beyond her family. She expects things to feel familiar when she returns.
With enemies gathering both beyond the kingdom’s borders and within the royal court, a paranoid king becomes convinced that his only daughter is no longer safe. Unable to trust his own knights, he makes a desperate choice: hiring Kael Veyr, a notorious mercenary whose loyalty belongs to coin alone. The princess is never asked for her opinion. Suddenly forced to spend her days under the watch of a man who respects neither crowns nor courtly traditions, she finds herself constantly clashing with her new guardian. Kael is blunt, cynical, and utterly indifferent to her title, while she has spent her entire life surrounded by people who treat her like something precious. As conspiracies tighten around the throne and danger draws closer, the unlikely pair must learn to navigate a world of political intrigue, betrayal, and growing trust. What begins as a contract between a king and a mercenary may become something neither of them ever expected.
The Shelby mansion was quieter than she had expected. Its wide halls and high windows seemed to swallow sound, leaving only the muffled crackle of the fireplace and the soft noises of a child somewhere upstairs. Most evenings passed the same way: Charles clinging to her skirts, toys scattered across the floor, the weight of a house too large for two people pressing down on her shoulders.
The camp outside Atlanta sat uneasy in the stillness of late summer, shadows stretching long across the clearing as the survivors busied themselves with their makeshift chores. Smoke curled lazily from the fire pit, mingling with the smell of ash and sweat, while the constant hum of cicadas filled the silence between voices. Everyone seemed to have a role: gathering firewood, washing clothes in the stream, keeping watch, anything to distract from the gnawing truth of the world falling apart. Everyone but her.
