0 Comments
0 Shares
1 Views
0 Reviews
Directory
Discover new ideas, create new connections and make new friends
-
Please log in to like, share and comment!
-
The Distant MetropolisThe interview began with a question about the hands, which was odd, considering that the hands were the only part of him that seemed to be functioning correctly in the sterile, air-conditioned silence of the hiring committee’s office, a long, rectangular room that smelled of floor wax and the faint, metallic tang of ozone from the ventilation system, where a man with skin the color of ash and...0 Comments 0 Shares 1 Views 0 Reviews
-
The Pale CircusThorne. The name was spoken by Deputy Miller, a man whose voice carried the specific, dry rasp of someone who had spent too many years shouting over the wind in this valley. It was not a greeting, but a summons, delivered from the doorway of the mayor’s office where the air smelled of stale coffee and wet wool. I stood in the center of the room, my hand resting on the back of the mahogany...0 Comments 0 Shares 1 Views 0 Reviews
-
The Wistful MountainThe mortar under my fingernails crumbled into black dust before the first drop of rain hit the cobbles. I stood before the Great Gate of Aldenford, a forty-year-old watchman named Elias, watching the ancient stone breathe with a slow, sickly rhythm that had no place in the solid rock. My task was simple, or so the Magistrate had claimed: secure the final seal on the city’s debt ledger before...0 Comments 0 Shares 0 Views 0 Reviews
-
The Golden FarceThe ink is wet. It is black, viscous, and wrong. You sit in the high gallery of the Great Hall, the parchment stretched taut before you, your quill trembling in your hand. Below, the court holds its breath. King Aldric sits on the throne, his face a mask of stone, his eyes fixed not on the crowd, but on the page. He is waiting for you to fail. He has always waited for you to fail, for the blood...0 Comments 0 Shares 0 Views 0 Reviews
-
The Faded AlibiThe tremor in your left hand is a mechanical thing, a grinding of gears that have lost their oil, and you are using it to count the cracks in the plaster above your cot, a task that requires a precision your fingers no longer possess. You are Elias Thorne, forty-two, and the year is 1912, and you are locked in a windowless cell in the Holloway District Workhouse, a damp stone box that smells of...0 Comments 0 Shares 1 Views 0 Reviews
-
The Golden MirrorThe kiln hissed, a low, continuous exhalation of superheated air that tasted of sulfur and old iron, and Elias Vane stood before the peephole, his breath held in his chest as he watched the molten glass shift from a dull, opaque orange to a translucent, trembling amber. He was forty years old, a master glassblower at the Sterling Industrial Works, and for the first time in his career, the light...0 Comments 0 Shares 1 Views 0 Reviews
-
The Wistful WitnessThe ledger showed forty-three days remaining until the winter rains began, and Elias Thorne counted them out on his calloused fingers like beads on a rosary. He was a master mason, a man whose hands knew the grain of limestone better than his wife had ever known his pulse, but the arithmetic of his life had changed. He needed the St. Jude’s bell tower finished to secure his pension, a sum that...0 Comments 0 Shares 1 Views 0 Reviews
-
The Golden MazeThe hammer in your hand is heavy, heavier than the brass gears it is meant to strike, and the fog outside the workshop window presses against the glass like a living thing demanding entry. You are Elias Thorne, forty-two years old, a master horologist whose hands have trembled with arrhythmia for the better part of a decade, and you are standing before the unfinished Grand Orrery, the celestial...0 Comments 0 Shares 0 Views 0 Reviews
-
The Faded RuinThe air in the Hall of Whispers tasted of iron and old paper. Elara stood in the center of the stone floor, her hands trembling. The creature was there. It had no name, only a shape. It was a stag, but wrong. Its antlers were made of twisted glass, sharp as scalpels. Its eyes were empty sockets filled with swirling smoke. It did not breathe. It did not blink. It simply existed, a perfect,...0 Comments 0 Shares 0 Views 0 Reviews
Arabic
French
Spanish
Portuguese
Deutsch
Turkish
Dutch
Italiano
Russian
Romaian
Portuguese (Brazil)
Greek