Chapter 3: Bringing Daddy Down

Daddy charged at me with his enormous cleaver raised over his head, and the stench of rotting meat intensified with every thundering step he took across the blood-stained kitchen floor.

***Author's Note: This was supposed to be a short story based on a dream I had the other day. But it took on a life of its own as I leaned into the story's horror. I hope it gives you a fright, as it did me writing it.***

Chapter 10

Chapter One

Calibration

"Motor response is still three milliseconds, too slow."

Chapter Nine: Dressing the Part

Chapter 13 — “The Frozen Gate”

The wind had gone still.

Chapter Four
Final Preparations

The final weeks before the banquet were quieter than the training hall—but far more exhausting.

Chapter 14: The Inquisition Reimagined

Chapter Eight: Dressing the Part

Chapter 9: Boundary of the Divine

The tension arrived before the sirens.

This was just a thought I came up with as I was pondering multiple dimensions and what gender might be like in them. What would happen if transgenderism were caused by bleed-through from another dimension? Impossible to prove, but what if?

My earliest memory wasn't of my parents.

It wasn't my first birthday.

It wasn't learning to walk.

It was looking into the bathroom mirror when I was barely four years old and wondering why the little boy staring back at me looked... wrong.

Not ugly.

Not broken.

Just...

Wrong.

Chapter Seven: Kitsura-kai

The attention kept growing. I started to notice it not just at work, but everywhere I went.

Chapter Two
The Awakening

Chapter 8

By the following morning, the questions swirling through the city had finally reached the clan’s doorstep, their urgency amplified by rumor, fear, and the relentless churn of public debate. Chief among them was one that threatened to divide the community more sharply than any other: Should hunters be allowed to attend school alongside normal children?

Chapter One
The Turning

I grew up in the 1980s and early 1990s as part of Generation X. Looking back, high school was one of the most confusing periods of my life, and the effects of that confusion still influence my relationships today.

I was transgender, although I didn't have a word for it back then. The vocabulary simply wasn't part of my world. I didn't know there were other people who felt the way I did, and I certainly didn't know that what I was experiencing had a name. All I knew was that I desperately wanted to be a girl, yet every mirror reminded me that everyone else saw me as a boy.

Chapter Five: Reflection

Chapter 60: Truths at the Table

The shift from the backyard to the house felt surreal. The evening air still clung to their skin, carrying the faint scent of smoke and grass as they left the chaos of the yard behind. Every step through the threshold felt like crossing a border between worlds—outside, the rawness of magic and fear; inside, the muted hush of ordinary life, untouched, waiting for them.

Chapter 61: The Summoning

Chapter Three: Identity

The air outside the chamber felt sharper than it should have.