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...