The bell above the door of the modestly named store, , jingled softly. The elderly woman behind the counter looked up, locking eyes with a young girl stepping in. She didn’t recognize her, and she was certain she knew every face, every animal, even every significant tree around the lake, all the way past the woods.

  Peering over the rim of her glasses, she studied the newcomer: young, carelessly dressed, too much skin exposed. , she thought,

  Deborah wandered in, taking her time. The store sat right beside the main road, housed in a low building with a tin roof, a faded facade, and signage that hadn’t changed since the Carter administration. Above the door hung a hand-painted board that might once have been red but now resembled rust more than anything else. The display window was cluttered with old posters: one for bait (), another for a local festival, and a third advertising a sale on cornmeal. Behind the dusty glass stood boxes of crackers and jars of pickled eggs floating in an amber liquid.

  Inside, the place felt divided right down the middle, two distinct worlds under one roof. To the left were shelves of basic groceries; to the right, fishing and camping gear. The floorboards groaned with every step. The air was thick, yet not unpleasant, on the contrary, it felt almost hypnotic. A blend of pine resin, motor oil, and smoked meat lingered like the ghost of simpler days: days of men in green fishing vests and women smoking thin cigarettes behind the counter.

  The grocery section was modest but serviceable: canned tuna, baked beans, sacks of flour with torn corners, crooked rows of cooking oil. At the far end, a refrigerator hummed, guarding milk, beer, and a few frostbitten fish fillets that looked as though no one had touched them in years. Behind the counter hung strips of dried meat, a handwritten list of cigarette prices, and a notice for a lost dog that answers to the name “Augie.”

  The other half of the store catered mostly to men. Fishing rods leaned against the wall like spears. In small bins were lures, some shiny and new, others rusty, as if they’d already seen water and been returned to the shelf. Hooks, nets, tackle boxes, everything that could fit into a boat or a trailer. In the corner sat two coolers: one for ice, the other for beer and soda. Beside them was a small camping section: battery lamps, gas canisters, lighters, and bug spray that probably hadn’t worked since the early ’90s.

  The register perched atop a high wooden counter, worn smooth where hands had slid coins and crates across it for decades. Behind it sat the woman herself, on a chair cushioned with a small pillow, looking as if she were part of the store’s inventory.

  Deborah moved through the aisles, collecting the basics. Nothing fancy, just essentials. She picked up sugar, salt, flour, oil, and eggs. A carton of shelf-stable milk. And, of course, three six-packs of beer, an essential item. She carried everything to the counter and set it down on the worn wood.

  The woman stood slowly, never taking her eyes off her. She removed one pair of glasses (which made her eyes look three times smaller) and replaced them with another, for distance.

  “Is that all?” she asked.

  “Please add a box of 'USA Gold',” Deborah said, pointing behind her.

  The woman’s jaw tightened. Without a word, she reached back and took down the cigarettes. Deborah could feel the woman’s hostility, so shifting her weight from foot to foot, she decided to try politeness.

  “It’s beautiful out here by the lake,” she said lightly. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen nature quite like this.”

  The woman snorted. “You new around here?”

  “I am,” Deborah replied. “I’m staying down the road, toward the dam. At the Wilkersons’ house.”

  “Ah. I know the Wilkersons well. That’s the house across from Congressman Longley’s cabin. They come by now and then. And you are... a relative?”

  “Oh, no, not at all. They used to hire me through the university to watch their kids and help around their property down in Charlotte.” Deborah gestured vaguely, in what might have been the right direction. “They asked me to look after their lake house, tidy it up before they return later in the summer. By the way, do you know anyone who could help mow the lawn?”

  “Derick Rose does that sort of work around here.” The woman switched glasses again, picked up a pencil, and carefully wrote his number on a torn corner of newspaper, digit by digit, as if engraving it.

  Deborah thanked her, perhaps a touch more politely than necessary, then packed her things and turned to leave. But she paused.

  “You said... across from Congressman Longley?”

  “From your window, you can surely see his cabin, straight across the lake. Our young congressman is the pride and joy of these parts. That boy was raised right. I’ve known him since he was this tall.” She held her hand to her knee.

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  Deborah thought for a moment. , she mused,

  She pushed the cart toward the door. As she opened it, the old woman called after her:

  “And dress warm, child!” She waited for Deborah’s puzzled glance before adding, with a faint, knowing smile: “Nights by the lake can be as cold as the grave.”

  *

  The road was gravel and winding, embraced by a forest of towering cypresses, pines, and firs. The trees were so tall and dense that if you looked up from the path, you would see only fleeting glimpses of blue sky. At the end of the road, after crossing a small bridge over a stream, you would find the Longley estate, and beyond that, before the lavish log house, stretched a wide emerald lake.

  The wood for the house came from the local forests. Thick pine logs, notched and interlocked at the corners, sealed with a mixture of clay and straw whitewashed with lime. In front of the cabin extended a broad terrace that jutted out over the lake. Supported by thick timber beams coated in tar, it conveyed a sense of permanence. Along one side of the terrace, stairs descended, steps worn by generations of Longley boots, leading to a lower platform. This, in turn, lay just above the water’s surface and served as a dock for the fishing boat. The vessel, old and battered, was large enough to carry several people. It looked as though its maker had designed it for hunting whales rather than trout.

  If by chance you found yourself standing on that terrace, your back to the lake, it would steal your breath. Above the house, as far as the eye could see, stretched a majestic old forest. In the early morning, fog would rise from the lake and embrace the trees, leaving only their towering tops protruding above the white silence.

  Inside, the house was dim, even at midday. The walls had absorbed years of smoke, sap, and thought. A granite fireplace dominated the living room. Above it, carefully mounted, hung old rifles, not as decorations, but as relics. Above the arched mantle, carved into the keystone, were the words:

  POWER IS NOT A SIN

  Those were the first words Gordon remembered. His father didn’t believe in fairy tales. He believed in principles, and in discipline. He was one of those men who rarely spoke, but when he did, it hurt. An officer of the old school, like his father before him, Gordon’s grandfather, he raised his son as a soldier, not as a boy. He struck rarely, but his gaze was heavy. He believed every son must be born twice: once from his mother’s womb, and again through pain.

  His mother was a different kind of punishment. She never raised her voice; she would simply stare at him in silence. The feel of her gaze was colder than his father’s hand. She couldn’t stand weakness and considered tenderness inappropriate. Her control was so complete even his father felt it. She would study his face as he ate, reading his thoughts through that stare. Once, she told him:

  “Gordon, God gave you to me so I could shape you according to His law.”

  On the walls of the cabin, between antique lamps and hunting trophies, hung taxidermied birds of prey: owls, hawks, and a weathered eagle Gordon’s grandfather had shot back in the fifties. Each bird was frozen in a moment, beak open, talons clenched, as if caught in a hunt that would never end. As if they had become the spirits of what the Longleys valued most: control, a sharp eye, and the strike when the time is right.

  In Gordon’s early youth, the house on the lake was a symbol of renunciation, duty, and pain disguised as training. It was never a place of rest, but a school of hardness and self-overcoming. In later years, after his parents stopped visiting, the house became something else. A refuge. A shelter. A haven of silence he needed as badly as air.

  There, in that silence, Gordon Longley was his truest self. Not the first young Republican congressman from North Carolina since 1877. Not the speaker in front of cameras. But the boy who had never truly grown up. The one who still feared his mother watching from the window. The one who flinched at the sound of his father’s footsteps. The one who thought about death, not as an end, but as a kind of release.

  *

  The day was clear, of a brilliance almost forgotten, one remembered only by children in postcards from childhood. The sky was cloudless, vast and deep blue, and the lake motionless and smooth as glass. In it, contrasting the sky’s azure, the green and endless forest was mirrored. In its dark depths, time itself seemed dormant, as if the days and hours remained trapped beneath the surface.

  High above, an eagle circled, a solitary figure in search of prey, a perpetual ascetic among birds. Now and then, its whistle pierced the air, riding the warm currents upward, effortless and eternal.

  Gordon sat in his boat, far out in the middle of the lake. It was a ritual, to set off in the morning after a cup of coffee, when the world still seemed innocent, and enter the realm of lures and waiting.

  He gazed thoughtfully into his tackle box, sifting through it with his fingers like someone trying to guess the mood of an invisible opponent.

  Which one today? Blue? Silver? The one with feathers?

  “,” he thought. “”

  Then came a sound, sharp, clear, and entirely unnatural. A whistle.

  He turned abruptly. The boat rocked gently. On the far shore, in front of the only house across the lake, stood a girl. She had waded into the water up to her knees. She wore tight shorts and a rainbow-colored crop top that exposed her flat stomach, just enough to stir a discomforting reminder that the world was still young, and cruel to those who were not.

  She waved cheerfully, as if from a time when things had not yet broken. She called out:

  “Neighbor! How thrilled would you be if I came over and brought some beer?”

  Gordon stared at her, unsure whether he was being tempted, or if reality, in one of its absurd jokes, was sending images that defied reason. She was young. She was ridiculous.

  He smiled, that kind of smile that comes when a man knows he’s giving the wrong answer, but can’t stop himself. He raised his arms and spread them wide, as if to show how big a fish he’d caught: This much.

  Deborah laughed.

  MESSIAH OF STEEL

  by Drake Steel

  When faith meets firepower… sparks will fly.

  Derek Steele was once a man of science, a brilliant engineer who built his own power armor from scavenged alien tech.

  He believed in data, not destiny. Then a relic from a forgotten civilization ripped him from Earth…

  and dropped him into a realm where magic spheres grant power, and gods rule through their chosen champions.

  Now hunted, outnumbered, and trapped in a war between faith and reason, Derek must upgrade his suit or die trying.

  Each battle brings new systems online. Each relic reveals dangerous truths about the spheres and the lies the faithful live by.

  But when his path crosses with Isabelle Blackwood, a devout Warden sworn to her god, the conflict becomes personal.

  She wields faith like a blade. He wields physics like a weapon.

  Together, they’ll face creatures twisted by the power of the spheres, criminals, heretics, ruthless zealots and a prophecy Derek refuses to believe.

  Messiah of Steel.

  “Iron Man crashes into epic fantasy and nothing will be the same.”

  New chapters every week ? Progression Fantasy ? LitRPG

  ? Read Messiah of Steel Now!