

Richard, a broke, sharp-tongued black-market vet, gets evicted from his rundown flat and is hired at an astronomical rate by the mysterious noblewoman Catherine to be the night keeper of Ashford Manor. His plan is simple: coast through the shift, collect his paycheck, and get out. But when he stumbles into a forbidden zone to save a mortally wounded Abyssal Royal Squid, he inadvertently completes the seal on an S-class calamity—and the overflow magic floods straight into him. Suddenly, the entire world thinks some legendary hidden powerhouse just obliterated the disaster. He keeps healing beasts for the money, but the more he heals, the stronger he becomes, earning him an A-rank agent badge from the DMTC. As he digs deeper into the manor's secrets, he uncovers the horrifying truth—this is no mansion, but a crumbling prison built on the souls of fourteen ancestral guardians, barely containing thousands of calamities. And he has been chosen as the sole heir to inherit their power and end a century-long nightmare.

At eighteen, Nancy Green earns the highest college entrance score in the entire county, and her parents respond by spending ten times her tuition on a motorized tricycle for her brother. With her dream about to die in a mountain village, it is her uncle who quietly sells the family’s last three sheep and presses the money into her hands without ceremony. Nancy carries that sacrifice like a weight and a wing, into a cutthroat corporate world where she battles betrayal and manipulation until she has built a billion-dollar empire from nothing. She confronts the parents who bled her dry with cold, clear-eyed finality. Then her uncle falls gravely ill, and on his deathbed whispers: hate will drag you down. It cracks open something she has armored for twenty years. In the end, Nancy founds a scholarship fund bearing his memory and gives other mountain girls the door someone once opened for her.

Three days before my wedding, Adrian canceled it for the fifty-second time. He came to the Palermo workshop to approve my gown’s crest embroidery, but the moment I stepped out from the fitting curtain, he snatched up his holster and radio. “Torino bastards smashed Bianca’s vineyard, surrounded the estate. Lia’s terrified, so I have to go. The wedding is off.” Once, I would have stopped him and demanded to know who mattered more to him, me or Bianca. This time, I simply let him go. Thirty minutes later, Bianca posted an Instagram Story: [You’re the only shelter for me and my daughter.] The photo showed Adrian holding Bianca close, with Lia in his arms, calling him Dad. They looked like a real family. My parents sighed. “Seraphina, is the wedding in Hawaii off again? We’ve already sent the invitations to every renowned Italian family. What will this do to the Bellini family’s honor?” I shook my head, tapping the backup invite. "The wedding goes on. In three days, I’ll still be a bride. Just not Adrian’s."