Showing results by author "C.M. Lehsten" in All Categories

In the small town of Hammond, intelligence blooms overnight. So does violence. When a genetically altered rose begins to spread through the community, the effects are subtle at first—sharper thinking, heightened perception, an unsettling sense of clarity. Then the crime starts. Brutal. Personal. Escalating. Marc Landon only wanted to finish his father’s life’s work: a luminous flower that defied nature and bloomed longer than any rose ever should. Camelia Standdard is sent to investigate the town-wide anomaly, certain the government’s theory is deeply malignant nonsense. They are ...

Some curses don’t turn you into a monster. They reveal the one you’ve always been. Britt has spent too long surviving a man who mistakes control for care. When something inside her finally answers back, he disappears—and what follows does not stay contained. Animals turn up broken. Time slips. Technology fails. And the violence does not remain distant. It moves with her. The stories in her family were never meant to comfort. They were instructions—passed down by women who learned how to live near something real, something physical, something that cannot be reasoned with or stopped. ...

Lacy and Bree escaped the island. They should have left the Festival behind. Instead, something followed them home. At first it’s small things—a sound in the walls, a sweetness in the air, a pressure that tightens whenever Bree tries to walk away. But the deeper they dig into the history of the Festival, the clearer the truth becomes: the lights and music were never the whole story. The Festival isn’t just a place. It’s a pattern. For generations it has moved from town to town, changing names, changing faces, leaving behind disappearances, broken traditions, and stories no one wants...

Bree James has lived her whole life under one rule: no carnivals. Her parents never explain means—only that fairs, festivals, and midways are forbidden. So when Bree leaves for college and spring break finally feels like freedom, she lies. She promises she’s safe. She swears she’s being careful. Then she flies to a tropical island for Carnivale. At first it’s paradise—music, lights, laughter, heat-soaked nights. But the island feels… wrong. Strange bells ring beneath the noise. “Locals only” events draw crowds with unsettling devotion. Smiles linger too long. Shadows move ...

At the Academy, corruption is not discovered. It is taught. Inside a classroom beyond time, Professor Seraphina Voltara presents a simple lesson: corruption does not begin with cruelty. It does not announce itself. It does not arrive as a fall. It arrives quietly. Politely. And it always feels justified. When the observation lens opens, the students are given a village. A priest who has never taken more than he was given. A woman whose voice carries weight in every conversation. A man who decides what is fair. Another who defines what is just. Four lives. Four points of influence. One ...

Course A Time Academy Examination At the Time Academy, students do not study disasters. They learn how to guide them. In the Examination known as Course, Professor Elion Calder teaches the redirection of catastrophe already in motion. The village they observe depends on the river that feeds it. It waters their fields. Turns their mills. Sustains the valley. But rivers remember older paths. With careful spellwork, the students begin nudging the water away from the course it has followed for generations. At first the change is small. A field dries. A mill slows. The valley begins to fracture....

At the Time Academy, disasters are curriculum. Students are not taught how to stop them. They are taught how to build them. This omnibus collects the first four Examinations—Silt, Saturate, Course, and Depth—where new students learn how disaster actually begins: With dark magic. Cast deliberately. Set into motion long before anyone understands what has changed. A thriving river village is chosen, then altered through spellwork. The land improves before it weakens. Water settles where it should not. Rivers shift. Foundations fail slowly enough to be trusted. And once people believe what ...

Noah is a farmer in a quiet valley where the river has always known its banks. Until the water stops receding. Each morning the ground grows wetter. The river climbs higher. Animals arrive two by two, pressing toward his land as if the earth itself is warning them. Far beyond the valley, Declan Rhoads, Maria Bellini, Adrian Kim, Sera Halden, Rowan Mercer, and Leila Manu are manipulating dark magic to complete the task assigned to them: Create the flood history already remembers. So Noah begins building a vessel. Because the rain is not stopping. The water has just begun.

She survived. That was supposed to be the ending. But the cold did not leave her. It answers now. Frost forms where she steps. Air tightens when she breathes. Sound bends, slows, or shatters depending on what the magic decides to allow. The world does not reset—it reacts. And she is not alone. The child she carries changes everything. Pressure breaks around her. Boundaries fail. Magic that should hold its shape fractures instead, refusing control, refusing correction. The rules that kept the world stable no longer apply. The Citadel sees it. A place built to measure magic. To correct it. ...

They were never meant to take from the dragon. The covenant was clear. The circle held. The offering was not theirs to claim. But not all of them agreed. When the first refusal fractures the coven, the divide is quiet—no war, no spectacle, only a choice that cannot be undone. Some remain in the circle, drawn toward the power they believe was always meant for them. Others turn away, holding to an older understanding of magic—one that cannot be consumed without consequence. The mountain does not react. The dragon does not intervene. The choice stands. And from that moment forward, the ...

After Happily Ever (3 Book Collection) Fairy tales were never meant to end. They were meant to continue collecting. Magic does not fade when the story closes. It settles into bloodlines. It waits in silence. It builds through generations until something—someone—forces it to move again. A woman walks away from the cold, only to discover it followed her—and answers to her now. A crime empire built on inheritance learns that power is not owned, only borrowed—and something older has come to collect. A family’s quiet survival fractures as the thing they lived beside steps forward—and...

Depth A Time Academy Examination At the Time Academy, students do not study disasters. They learn how to guide them. In the Examination known as Depth, Professor Thalassa Nerion teaches how disaster begins long before anyone recognizes it. The village they observe depends on the river that feeds it. It waters their fields. Turns their mills. Sustains the valley. But water remembers what lies beneath it. With careful spellwork, the students begin lowering the river itself. At first the change is small. The current slows. The banks grow unstable. The valley begins to sink into its own future.

Saturate A Time Academy Examination At the Time Academy, students do not learn magic to protect the world. They learn how to break it. In the Examination known as Saturate, Professor Adrian Kell leads her students through a disaster built slowly and deliberately through ritual and spellwork. The lesson is the controlled manipulation of water, methodically expanded through ritual and spellwork until the land itself gives way. Outside the Academy, a village struggles to survive on land pushed beyond its natural limits. The ground grows heavy with water. Work demands more strength. Every step ...

He does not arrive with warning. He arrives when something has already begun to turn. Don never forces a door. He is simply there when it opens. The offer is always simple. Spoken plainly. Shaped exactly to what is needed in the moment it is needed most. There are no riddles. Nothing hidden you can uncover later. Only terms. And those terms are always kept. When Lena finds him standing inside her home, nothing feels broken at first. Nothing looks wrong. But the air settles differently around him, as though the room has made space. Numbers change while you’re looking at them. Details ...

Dragons ruled the sky. The coven served beneath it. For generations, the mountain witches upheld a sacred bond—calling dragons to their fires, guarding their territory, and carrying fragments of their power within their blood. The covenant had never failed. Until the sky began to empty. At first, the change is subtle. Fewer wings cross the mountains. Longer silences stretch between each descent. The dragons still answer the fires—but something in the magic has shifted. It no longer rises. It settles. Power roots deeper with every communion, binding itself into bone and blood while the ...

Indulgence does not begin with corruption. It begins with permission. At the Time Academy, students are taught through catastrophe. Their latest Examination: a village, a subtle enchantment, and a single objective— remove restraint. No one is commanded. No one is controlled. The villagers simply begin choosing what they want. A celebration forms. Then it spreads. Then it replaces everything. Work stops. Time dissolves. Responsibility fades. And still— nothing feels wrong. Because the most dangerous collapse is the one no one resists. At the Academy, history is not recorded. It is ...

Flynn fixes things. That’s what he’s always done. Machines. Structures. Anything that stops working the way it should. So when the Ferris wheel refuses to stop— when the lights keep burning long after they should go dark— when the structure holds in ways it shouldn’t— He does what he’s always done. He tries to fix it. But the carnival wasn’t broken. It was never passing through. And some things don’t need repair. They need witnesses.

At the Time Academy, students do not study history. They learn how to create it. Professor Marcus Halloway’s newest class is simple: observe a thriving river village and record what changes over time. No interference. No warnings. No conclusions. At first, the land only grows richer. Harvests improve. Homes expand closer to the water. Confidence settles over the valley like fertile soil. But Halloway is not teaching them to watch catastrophe. He is teaching them to understand how belief forms — and how civilizations destroy themselves long before anyone realizes danger has begun. When ...

Eleanor Whitlock has always done things correctly. She arrives on time. She follows procedure. She fixes what others overlook. When Eleanor wakes inside a hospital that will not let her leave, she does what she has always done: she works. She feeds patients. She dispenses medication. She keeps records. She maintains order. The days repeat. The floors fill. The people learn to wait. As Eleanor’s body weakens and the hospital subtly reshapes itself around her, she begins to understand that precision does not prevent harm — it only determines where harm settles. Some mistakes cannot be ...

If you're reading this, it means the Festival is close again. A traveling carnival arrives in a valley that doesn’t exist on any map. It never has. And it doesn’t let everyone leave. Harold has spent his whole life building worlds that vanish by morning—lights, laughter, the roar of rides, and the kind of fun people pay for because it feels safe. So when his traveling carnival is invited deep into a hidden Appalachian valley for a festival that only happens once every five years, he thinks it’s just another stop on the circuit. A good crowd. Easy money. A place to set up, tear down,...