0 Comments
0 Shares
0 Views
0 Reviews
Directory
Discover new ideas, create new connections and make new friends
-
Please log in to like, share and comment!
-
The Golden OathThe parchment was thick, heavy with the red wax of the Cardinal’s seal, and it smelled of tallow and dried blood. Elias Thorne held it up to the grey light filtering through the abbey window, his fingers trembling not from cold but from a hunger that had eaten through him for three days. He was thirty years old, a man whose bones felt too large for his body, and he had traveled for two weeks to...0 Comments 0 Shares 0 Views 0 Reviews
-
The Faded PortraitThe air in the central atrium of the Obsidian Citadel tasted of iron and old dust, a metallic tang that coated the back of Elian’s throat as he stood before the Grand Archivist. He was sixteen, a scribe of the Third Order, and his hands trembled not from fear but from the sheer, crushing weight of the silence that pressed against the high, crumbling spires around him. The Archivist, a figure...0 Comments 0 Shares 0 Views 0 Reviews
-
The Golden CellarThe first brick weighed four hundred and twelve pounds, a fact Leonard Fenwick had recorded in his ledger with a grease-pencil that smudged against the damp stone. He counted the hours he had spent staring at the mortar, three days of dry heaving and chipping that had left his forearms trembling with a fatigue that went deeper than muscle, deeper into the marrow where the ache of his wife’s...0 Comments 0 Shares 0 Views 0 Reviews
-
The Distant JokeThe first thing you notice is the smell of rot, sharp and metallic, clinging to the air of the lower archives. You are Elias Thorne, a scribe of no rank, and your fingers are stained black with ink that does not wash off. Your mother, Elara, lies in the cold stone of her room above the palace, her breath shallow, her body wasting away like paper in a fire. She is dying, and the physicians have...0 Comments 0 Shares 0 Views 0 Reviews
-
The Distant GhostThe mud of the northern frontier had a way of swallowing boots, and by the time I waded through the knee-deep slurry to reach the command tent, my legs felt less like limbs and more like the rusted hinges of a gate left open in a storm. I was thirty-four years old, a Lieutenant in the Imperial Guard, and I carried the weight of a lineage that the court viewed with the same suspicion one might...0 Comments 0 Shares 0 Views 0 Reviews
-
The Wistful CampusThe loom struck again. It was not a mechanical sound. It was a dry, hollow crack, like a bone snapping in a frozen room. I flinched, my hand hovering over the shuttle. The air in the Ashworth Mill did not move. There was no draft, no wind to stir the dust motes dancing in the gray light that filtered through the high, soot-stained windows. Yet the temperature dropped. My breath misted in front...0 Comments 0 Shares 0 Views 0 Reviews
-
The Distant BladeThe parchment was thin, yellowed at the edges, and smelled faintly of damp stone and old iron, a scent that clung to the air of the study like a ghost refusing to leave the room. I held the document, my fingers trembling not from cold, but from the weight of the ink, which had faded to a bruised purple over the decades, and I read the clause that had defined my life for the last five years: the...0 Comments 0 Shares 0 Views 0 Reviews
-
The Pale TowerThe wetness in the left cuff had been there for three days, a cold, persistent damp that defied the heater’s dry heat and the sun’s pale promise. Elias Thorne counted the seconds of the wait, forty-two years of service reduced to a number in a spreadsheet, his hands resting on the desk’s surface where the wood was scarred by years of frantic signing and erasing. He wanted only the pension, the...0 Comments 0 Shares 1 Views 0 Reviews
-
The Pale FractureThe ink does not dry. It sinks. That is the first rule of the Ministry of Memory, and the reason why we wear gloves, why we speak in whispers, why the air in the subterranean vaults tastes of copper and old dust. I am Elias Thorne, thirty-four years old, a senior archivist in Grade Four. For twelve years, I have cataloged the sins of the city, binding them into leather-bound volumes that fuel...0 Comments 0 Shares 0 Views 0 Reviews
Arabic
French
Spanish
Portuguese
Deutsch
Turkish
Dutch
Italiano
Russian
Romaian
Portuguese (Brazil)
Greek