A Pocket Universe Adventure: Twice Taken

By: Joseph Santiago

Narrated by: Virtual Voice

Some games are played for money.
This one is played for reality.
Shanghai, 1926.
Meilin wants music.
Jue wants the rush of the next perfect hand.
What they get is taken.
When a high-stakes Mahjong game draws the attention of Xenon—an ancient predator shaped by Greek philosophy and immortal hunger—the twins become collateral in a silent war that stretches from the International Settlement to Prohibition-era New York.
Across the ocean waits Livia: Roman, ruthless, and building a modern empire out of jazz clubs, blood routes, and broken loyalties.
But vampires are only the surface.
Above them all, unseen and calculating, the Shinigami watch.
The Great Game governs every city, every conflict, every whispered betrayal. It runs on attention, leverage, and consequence. It feeds on spectacle. It rewards evolution.
And when a violent rupture fuses Meilin and Jue into one shared body, they are dragged into a pocket universe where identity fractures, power recalibrates, and survival becomes training.
They are not rescued.
They are upgraded.
Now ancient immortals circle. Shinigami factions split. A Player smiles from beyond the veil. And the twins must decide whether they will be consumed by the Game—
or learn how to bend it.