The bones were in place.
Fiction Zone stood—functional, minimal, and quietly revolutionary. A clean interface, crisp navigation, and just enough aesthetic polish to make it stand out from the clunky, ad-ridden monstrosities of 2010. But now came the lifeblood: content.
Shadow leaned back in his chair, eyes scanning lines of code and folders packed with outlines. His mind moved with the precision of a chess master ten moves ahead, fingers drumming against the desk as he contemplated his next step.
Dumping a flood of 2025's best novels into the void of 2010 would've been easy.
But Shadow wasn't building a site. He was building taste. Culture. A movement.
So, he curated.
He started with early LitRPG—barely a whisper in 2010 but destined to explode into a global phenomenon within the next decade. Then came gritty, morally grey fantasy epics with world-building that would rival Tolkien—books that would one day dominate bestseller lists and Reddit forums alike. And of course, the young adult dystopias—raw, thrilling, dripping with rebellion—before any publisher had even dreamed of them.
Each title was chosen with surgical precision, tailored to nudge the world toward what it was supposed to become.
But Shadow didn't stop at content. He understood something most developers of the era didn't: experience mattered.
He implemented features that were unheard of in 2010 but commonplace in his timeline—smooth, intuitive page transitions, adjustable font sizes, a toggle for "Night Mode" to ease eye strain during long reading sessions. He even added a basic comment system under each chapter, letting readers discuss in real time—a small feature with massive potential.
It was subtle innovation. Nothing flashy. Just… better.
And people noticed.
Shadow didn't launch with fanfare. No Facebook ads. No viral gimmicks.
Instead, he went underground.
He slipped into the digital spaces he knew best—those dusty corners of the internet where writers shared first drafts, where sci-fi nerds debated over power scaling, and where fantasy die-hards hunted obscure indie gems like buried treasure. Forums. Fanfic sites. Discord's primitive ancestors.
He posed as a regular user. Just another curious reader who had "stumbled upon" a strange little site packed with shockingly high-quality stories.
"Hey, anyone heard of this place called Fiction Zone? Found it last night. The UI's kinda slick… but the books? Unreal. Never seen half of these before. Are they indie or what?"
The bait was cast.
And the internet bit.
At first, it was a trickle—one or two replies. "Link?" "Looks interesting." Then came the first wave of traffic. Then the second. Then the flood.
Within days, threads across multiple forums were buzzing with conversation.
"Where did these stories come from? Some of these feel way ahead of their time…"
"Did you read Steelborn Chronicles? It's like Game of Thrones but with mechs!"
"Okay, seriously, this site is fire. Who's behind it?"
Shadow watched it all unfold through an anonymous admin panel, the numbers climbing with quiet urgency. Visitor count. Time spent per session. Repeat users.
He'd seen success before. Real success. IPOs. Buyouts. Millions in seed funding.
But this? This was different.
This was raw. Untouched. A seed, sprouting in real time beneath his fingertips.
He sat in the soft glow of the monitor, watching users scroll, comment, argue, rave. Watching strangers fall in love with stories from a future they couldn't yet understand. It was surreal—like watching fate bend around his fingertips.
And for the first time since waking up in this younger body, he felt it fully:
Power.
Not the corporate kind, not the kind that wore suits and sat in boardrooms.
This was creator's power. Vision. Impact. A ripple that would grow into a wave.
Shadow smiled, a quiet, knowing curve of the lips as he sipped cooling coffee and clicked through the server logs. The world had noticed. Fiction Zone had begun.
And this time, it wouldn't just be a platform.
It would be a revolution.