Duality of Shadows - Chapter 1: The Real Culprit

After being torn from the only life she knew, 16-year-old Margo is forced into a new home with strangers who call themselves her parents. Haunted by memories of her past and consumed by feelings of isolation, she struggles to adapt to her unfamiliar surroundings. School offers little relief—until she meets Lucien, a mysterious boy who appears just when she needs a friend the most.Gabriel is everything Margo needs: kind, attentive, and always ready to whisk her away from her troubles. Each night, he invites her to secret places—an abandoned playground, a fog-choked garden, a crumbling train station at the edge of town—each more unsettling than the last. Yet with every chilling rendezvous, Margo feels more alive... more seen.But something isn’t right. Gabriel never comes to school during the day. Her adoptive parents never see him. And when they catch her talking to thin air, their concern deepens into fear. They say Gabriel isn't real—that he’s a figment of her imagination. Margo wants to believe them, but Gabriel feels real. More real than anything else in her life.As the nights grow colder and more twisted, Gabriel’s true nature begins to surface. Shadows move where they shouldn’t. Time warps in his presence. And the places they visit seem to echo with whispers from another world. Margo is forced to ask herself: Who—or what—is Gabriel? Why does he only want her? And what will happen on the final night he asks her to come with him?As the line between reality and delusion begins to crumble, Margo must make an impossible choice: stay in a world where she feels loved, or return to one that barely feels real.But one thing is certain—some friendships never let go.

(Third Person Limited PoV.)Betrayed by his fiancée, mocked by his siblings, and disowned by his family—that was Lev’s fate.Even when he regained memories of his life on Earth, where he realized that his world was strikingly similar to his favorite novel, it still didn’t help him change anything.How could it be?Because the protagonist of the story had already achieved his happy ending—gaining a beautiful wife and living a blissful life. Meanwhile, the world continued to move forward.What do people usually do with a novel that has ended? They tend to stop caring about the world within it, even if it falls into ruin, especially if the novel isn’t particularly popular.The world Lev Razanov lived in shared a similar fate—it was destroyed.[Hero’s System successfully installed.][Critical condition detected.][Do you wish to return to the past?]Lev was given a chance to return to a time when the story of his favorite novel had just begun.Although he was destined to become an extra villain—a pawn of the pawns serving the real villain, he vowed to end the lives of anyone who had caused him suffering: his siblings, his fiancée, the main character, or anyone else.[Hero’s System inherits your desire from your life on Earth—the desire to do good.]“Who said killing your enemies is an evil act?”

As a true over-bearing president scum gong, when Xie He for the Nth time rejected his admirer, he heard a sentence in his head: “Congratulations on achieving the “rejects 100 hosts” accomplishment; as an award you will soon bind to the “Scum Gong and Cheap Shou” system, entering other worlds to complete capture missions.

[Warning: This thing contains a bit too much bloodshed... so...]yes u saw the tags right, this is a mix of cultivation and tower so expect both the magic and cultivation in this.Villainous MC with a Personal system? if thats what u were looking for, you already got it!check the book out.-----Ye Tian was once just an ordinary human from Earth, living a mundane life. But fate had other plans for him.He was mysteriously transmigrated into the world of cultivation, a place where strength reigned supreme and power could shape reality. In this world, Ye Tian embarked on a dark path... the path of demons.After trillions of years of cultivation, he ascended to the pinnacle of power, becoming the Absolute Demon, feared and revered across the entire cosmos.His beauty was angelic, but beneath that flawless appearance lay the heart of a ruthless killer... a demon hidden in the guise of an angel.Countless races trembled at his name. He was a cold-blooded, merciless force of destruction, known for slaughtering without hesitation.Entire worlds were laid to waste at his feet. His cruelty knew no bounds, and his reign of terror spanned eons. Yet, for all his strength and dominance, there was no satisfaction.Ye Tian grew weary of the endless killing and ruling. Standing at the top, alone and bored, life had become empty... a never-ending cycle of bloodshed that no longer stirred his emotions.But everything changed one fateful day.In the blink of an eye, Ye Tian found himself back in his old body, back on Earth, as if the trillions of years he had spent cultivating were nothing more than a distant dream. However, this Earth was not the one he remembered. The world had changed.A giant Tower had appeared... like something out of the fictional fantasy stories he had read in his past life.And just as Ye Tian began to grasp this new world, a system window appeared before him...[Connecting to the Tower.]*****