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 Distant MachineOctober 12, 1911 The tremor in my left hand has become a distinct, rhythmic vibration, a mechanical grinding that seems to emanate from the very marrow of my radius and ulna. The doctors at the company infirmary call it "the machine’s rejection," a polite euphemism for the fact that my body is no longer compatible with the precision required of a senior railway inspector. I am forty-two years...0 Comments 0 Shares 0 Views 0 Reviews
-
The Pale ProtocolThe ink in my pen is running low, and so is my will, but I must set down the facts before the mist takes them. I am Elias Thorne, border warden of the highlands, thirty-two years old, and I am writing this from the cold floor of my quarters with a shattered arm and a heart that beats like a trapped bird. I want only the pension. It is a small thing, a paper promise, but it is the only wall...0 Comments 0 Shares 0 Views 0 Reviews
-
The Faded PhotographThe rain hammered against the glass of the fourth-floor window, blurring the city into a smear of gray and neon. You stood before the mirror in the small office, adjusting your tie, but your eyes kept dropping to your left hand. It was thin. Not thin in the way of aging or illness, but thin in the way of old paper, translucent enough that you could see the blue veins beneath the skin like ink...0 Comments 0 Shares 0 Views 0 Reviews
-
The Golden MasterThe frost bit into the iron of my staff, a sharp, metallic taste that coated the back of my throat. I stood at the North Gate, the breath in my lungs a white cloud that dissipated before it could reach the stone. The city of Oakhaven slept, but it did not rest. It watched. Above the archway, the great statue of Saint Aldric, cast in gold so pure it seemed to generate its own light, stared down...0 Comments 0 Shares 0 Views 0 Reviews
-
The Pale VerdictThe white rose on the desk had lost its first petal by noon. Elias Thorne watched it drift to the carpet, a small, pale thing against the dark wool, and felt the cold settle in his stomach. He was forty years old, a professor of natural philosophy at a university that owed more to Lord Blackwood’s coal than to its own curriculum. Clara lay in the next room, her breath a shallow rattle in the...0 Comments 0 Shares 0 Views 0 Reviews
-
The Pale VerdictThe porcelain hand in Elias Thorne’s pocket vibrated against his thigh with a low, bone-deep hum that only he could hear, a frequency that seemed to resonate with the very marrow of his skeleton as he sat in the gas-lit gloom of the Metropolitan Police Archives, surrounded by the dust of a hundred unsolved cases. It was a fractured relic, a piece of a tea set that had belonged to his wife,...0 Comments 0 Shares 0 Views 0 Reviews
-
The Faded ApartmentThe wood is wet, Elias. Silas’s voice was not loud, but it carried the weight of the damp stone behind him, a sound that seemed to leak out of the chapel walls themselves as he stood in the doorway, watching me with eyes that had seen too many winters and too little forgiveness. I looked up from the chisel in my hand, the iron blade still buried in the rotting heart of the central pillar, and...0 Comments 0 Shares 0 Views 0 Reviews
-
The Golden MazeThe ink in the well was not black, but a deep, arterial red that pulsed with a rhythm distinct from Elias Thorne’s own fading heartbeat. It was the year of our Lord 1240, and the high tower of the Abbey of St. Jude stood isolated against the gray, churning sky, a needle piercing the storm clouds that had sealed the valley below in a shroud of sleet. Elias, fifty-two years old and gaunt as a...0 Comments 0 Shares 0 Views 0 Reviews
-
The Wistful DinnerThe locket was cold. Not cold like silver left in a drafty room, but cold like the inside of a grave. I found it in the attic, tucked between the rotting slats of the floorboards, wrapped in a scrap of my sister’s old blue silk. Margaret had been dead for three years, taken by the fever that swept through the lower districts, but this object felt heavy in my palm, denser than metal should be....0 Comments 0 Shares 0 Views 0 Reviews
Arabic
French
Spanish
Portuguese
Deutsch
Turkish
Dutch
Italiano
Russian
Romaian
Portuguese (Brazil)
Greek