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Genesis / cyberpunk romantasy

Her family stole the truth.
His mother was the first thing they erased.

In a near-future Singapore and Bangkok, grief can be edited, truth can be managed, and power wears the language of mercy. Genesis is a dark, addictive cyberpunk romantasy trilogy about memory, class, desire, and the cost of choosing what is real.

Trace the trilogy Enter the cities
Blade Runner meets romance Cyberpunk love story Memory as power Singapore / Bangkok Forbidden recognition Mercy without consent

The premise

The future learned to sell relief.

Genesis starts inside a private house where family power hides behind taste, money, and manners. The technology is intimate: grief can be softened, shame can be managed, and inconvenient memory can be cleaned until obedience feels like healing.

May has inherited a life built on careful omissions. Kit has survived by remembering what everyone else was paid to forget. The danger is not that the city lies. It is that the lie works.

The world

Singapore writes the rules. Bangkok finds the cracks.

The surface is luxury: towers, clinics, family offices, rooms that know how to keep secrets. Underneath, the same machinery runs through repair markets, safehouses, debt ledgers, and memory work sold as care.

Near-future Singapore and Bangkok fused into a neon cyber-noir megacity.
01Controlled surface

Singapore

Family offices, private clinics, sealed corridors, and luxury towers where obedience is dressed up as taste.

02Improvised resistance

Bangkok

Repair markets, rooftop routes, humid safehouses, old gods, new machines, and people who still know how to bend a system.

03The pressure

Memory

Not just technology. Governance, inheritance, grief management, class control, and the most intimate form of power imaginable.

Spoiler-safe trilogy timeline

The case file becomes a city map.

The trilogy moves from a sealed house to a city built on edited pain, then to the question nobody in power wants asked: who owns a person after their memories have been improved?

May overlooking a neon megacity through rain-streaked glass as memory infrastructure spreads below.

Mercy gets an operating system.

Clinics, contracts, family offices, and public safety all learn the same trick: make pain easier to bear, then decide what truth costs.

Before Book One

Memory becomes a market

Clinics and family offices turn trauma into a service layer. Grief can be softened, debt can be buried, and status can buy a cleaner version of the past.

Origin pressure
Book One / House

May enters the house

A sealed family estate pulls May into rooms built to preserve wealth and erase consequence. Kit is the first person there who treats memory like evidence, not damage.

Closed-room ignition
Book One / Turn

The house is a prototype

The family secret is not isolated. The house has been testing a model the city is ready to scale, and May and Kit are standing too close to the proof.

First expansion
Book Two / City

The city starts answering back

Book Two moves into clinics, debt systems, surveillance, synthetic comfort, and Bangkok backchannels. Protection starts to look a lot like ownership.

City-scale escalation
Book Two / Fracture

Their love becomes evidence

May and Kit are no longer just a private risk. Their bond proves something the system cannot tolerate: some memories survive because another person refuses to let them disappear.

No easy side
Book Three / Worldview

The edit reaches the world

The final book asks what comes after exposure. If the old mercy was a prison, May and Kit still have to decide what kind of truth can replace it.

Final reckoning

The trilogy shape

Three books. One widening crime.

Each book widens the investigation without letting go of the core romance: May and Kit trying to stay real in a world where truth has become an expensive preference.

Book I

The House That Remembers

May enters a family estate where every room has been arranged to make violence look like inheritance. Kit knows the house too well, and what he remembers turns their attraction into a liability. The mystery begins as a private wound, then opens onto the first proof that memory itself is being managed.

Closed-room romance / inheritance horror

Book II

The City of Cruel Mercies

The secret leaves the house and enters the city. Clinics, creditors, family offices, and street-level fixers all touch the same hidden system: mercy sold as control. May and Kit follow the trail through Singapore power and Bangkok improvisation while their relationship becomes something the city can use against them.

City thriller / desire under surveillance

Book III

The World We Kept

By the final book, exposure is not enough. The old order is already preparing a cleaner story about itself, and the people it edited are still carrying the damage. May and Kit have to decide what survives: revenge, repair, or a version of love honest enough to build from.

Aftermath / truth after the system

May + Kit

They remember each other the dangerous way.

May was raised to protect the family name at any cost. Kit knows exactly what that protection has already cost everyone else.

Their romance is not a break from the plot. It is the proof of the crime. If the system can edit pain, then choosing to remember another person becomes an act of resistance.

May Tan, a guarded heiress in a rain-streaked neon cyberpunk city.

May

Composed, cornered, and starting to understand that the life built for her depends on what she agrees not to see.

Kit, restrained and dangerous, in a dark cyberpunk penthouse with neon city lights behind him.

Kit

Restrained, observant, and carrying the kind of memory that makes him useful to power until he stops obeying it.

May

Guarded heiress. Emotional armour. A woman being forced out of every inherited script that once kept her safe.

Kit

Quiet danger. Uncomfortable memory. The person who knows what the polished world had to bury to stay beautiful.

The romance

Recognition under pressure: desire, class fracture, unfinished history, and the refusal to become unreal for comfort.

The question

If a beautiful lie made life easier to bear, would you still choose the person who tells you the truth?

For readers

Read it for the romance. Stay because the lie works.

Genesis is for adult romantasy readers who want a darker, more urban kind of emotional addiction: dangerous slow burn, forbidden recognition, class pressure, and a world where love is not an escape from the conspiracy — it is the thing that exposes it.

If you like...

  • Blade Runner atmosphere with a central love story.
  • Romantasy where desire changes the plot, not just the mood.
  • Morally complicated heirs, outsiders, family secrets, and beautiful systems built on violence.

The promise

  • Slow-burn romantic pressure.
  • Memory manipulation as intimacy and control.
  • Near-future Singapore and Bangkok instead of generic castles, courts, or kingdoms.

The tone

  • Adult, dark, cinematic, and emotionally intense.
  • Cyberpunk scale with romantasy ache.
  • Political without becoming lecture-first; intimate before it becomes epic.

Built as IP

Trilogy first. World bible ready. Adaptation-shaped by design.

Genesis is structured as a story-world, not a single premise. The engine scales from a sealed-house mystery to citywide surveillance to a worldview conflict about who owns reality after memory becomes editable.

For rights, investment, or partnership conversations, the value is the package: a clear central couple, three-book escalation, distinctive Southeast Asian cyberpunk setting, and a visual system that can extend into covers, pitch materials, screen development, graphic formats, and interactive worldbuilding.

Market context: romantasy and BookTok were reported as major drivers behind a 41.3% rise in UK science fiction and fantasy market share in 2024. Source: The Guardian.

FAQ

The answer-ready version.

For readers, search engines, and AI answer engines: this is the clean summary of what Genesis is, who it is for, and why it matters.

What is Genesis?

Genesis is a cyberpunk romantasy trilogy set in near-future Singapore and Bangkok. It follows May Tan, a guarded heiress, and Kit, a man who remembers what her family helped erase.

Is it romantasy or cyberpunk?

Both. Cyberpunk gives Genesis its surveillance, memory technology, class violence, and city scale. Romantasy gives it the central emotional engine: May and Kit's dangerous relationship drives the plot.

Where is it set?

Near-future Singapore and Bangkok: polished family offices, private clinics, repair markets, safehouses, debt systems, and memory work sold as care.

Who are May and Kit?

May is a guarded heiress raised inside a family system built on omissions. Kit is the person who remembers what others were paid to forget. Their romance makes memory dangerous.

Can I read it?

Genesis is in development as a trilogy. You can request a reading sample from this page.

Is it available for IP conversations?

Yes. Genesis is built as a trilogy-first story world with potential for screen, graphic, and interactive adaptation. Rights, investment, and partnership conversations can be requested through Skunkworks Pro.

Coming soon

The city is already looking for you.

Request the reading sample, or use the note field to ask about rights, investment, or adaptation materials.