The Waiting Room Rain pounded the slate roof in jagged rhythms, each drop like a frantic plea against the cold iron of the tracks. The wind shrieked through the station’s eaves, scattering puddles into froth. Yet inside the small, rural hall—its name chalked illegibly against mossed wood—a roaring fire snapped and roared, chasing back the darkness. The hearth’s lamplight danced across polished floorboards and battered lug...

The last embers of the range war still glowed in Luke Corrigan’s mind as he spurred his mount down the winding trail. Dust-clogged valleys stretched behind him, punctuated by the smoking ruins of homesteads—silent testaments to a conflict that had finally died in blood. Corrigan, tall and barrel-chested, rode like death astride a roan mare, twin Colt .44s resting in polished holsters, a Springfield ’63 carbine stowed in a...

The city of Marnica used to be alive with conversation — street poets, radio debates, satirical magazines, open-air philosophers. Now, only the wind and the algorithms dared speak without a filter. Once a beacon of progressive ideals, the Republic of Corvia prided itself on compassion, openness, and reinvention. Its leaders welcomed waves of migrants fleeing war and climate catastrophe. They dismantled old systems, promis...

Act I: Seeds of Unease Daniel Price lived by routines. He had to. It was the only way he felt the day wouldn’t scatter itself into pieces — one more shattered thing in a life that already seemed like a junk drawer of failures. He rose at 6:30 every morning in his Queens apartment, showered, dressed, and left at 7:15 sharp, walking three blocks to the subway station. The train rattled into Manhattan, delivering him to the...

1. The First Voice Dr. Lena Rourke didn’t believe in ghosts, but there was something spectral about the new server cluster. Rows of black towers blinked with synchronized lights, as if they were breathing in a slow, mechanical rhythm. When she walked through the lab at night, she felt as if something unseen was watching her. The AI project—codename Eidolon—was funded by the Defence Ministry but built under the guise of an...

The World’s End The last tree leaned into the wind, its branches skeletal, its leaves as brittle as old paper. Across the horizon, cities were winking out one by one, each extinguished light another heartbeat silenced. A child knelt in the dust, her palm pressed against the ground. She whispered to the soil as though it might whisper back, the way her grandmother once said the earth used to sing. But the ground was silent...

Chapter One: The Devil’s Ante Marseilles, 1928. The humid breeze off the Mediterranean did little to chase the stench of sweat and cheap perfume from the back room of Le Serpent Doré. Inside, shadows clung to the stained walls, punctuated only by the dull glow of a single green-shaded lamp hanging over a scarred poker table. Cigarette smoke curled like ghostly fingers toward the ceiling, and somewhere in the gloom, a cloc...

The moon rode high above the inlet when Jonah first stumbled into its hush. He’d come to escape his restless mind—a late shift in the grocery store, too many nights spent counting cans instead of dreams. The sea wind curled through the dunes, salt and pinewood in one breath. Silvery light spilled over the tide pools, stirring reflections in the rock’s shallow hollows. Jonah paused at the water’s edge. A soft murmur rose f...

Chapter 1: “A New Beginning” Alice Greaves rang the bell at Flat 0A and stepped inside. The spacious ground‐floor apartment had been newly refitted: pale oak flooring, brushed-steel fixtures, and floor-to-ceiling windows overlooking a manicured courtyard. Agents had boasted “heritage chic,” though the block itself was barely ten years old. After her divorce, the quiet of this upmarket development in southern England promi...

Chapter I: The Pharaoh’s Blood London’s fog-wreathed streets lay quietly under the first hush of midnight, yet in grand Mayfair drawing rooms, candles burned bright. Beneath crystal chandeliers and atop Persian carpets, figures draped in velvet and silk murmured over claret. They were the city’s finest: dukes, industrial magnates, famous artists—each unknowingly enmeshed in a centuries-old web. At the center of the larges...

The Fitzroys: Part One Chapter One – Shadows of Norfolkshire It was in the waning years of that restless century, when revolutions smouldered abroad yet the ancient privileges of rank held firm in England, that the Fitzroy estate stood in grim isolation amidst the flat expanses of Norfolkshire. A house of venerable stone, weather-beaten by many a winter gale, it looked out upon fields where peasants bent their backs in ce...

Chapter Six – The Oak at Midnight The moon hung sharp and cold above Norfolkshire, silvering the frost-bound fields, when Jasper roused his brother from uneasy slumber. Jeremy started from his bed, heart racing, for he had dreamt again of Willie’s pale face, lips moving soundless words. Yet Jasper’s hand was upon his shoulder, urgent and hot with fevered purpose. “Up, Jeremy,” he whispered harshly. “Dress thee and come. W...