## The Echo Bloom The dust tasted like crushed stone and something sharper, metallic. Twelve-year-old Elara wiped a grime ribbon across her cheek with the back of a calloused hand, squinting at the pulsing sandstone wall before her. It throbbed…
## The Static Bloom The salt spray tasted like iron, clung to Maya’s eyelashes. Three sunrises bled into one another on the horizon – a bruised violet, an angry ochre, and the dull ruby of K’tharr. She hadn’t slept properly…
The rain smelled of salt and something else—rotting kelp, maybe, clinging to the stone walls. Twilight bled across Haven’s harbor, a bruised purple and grey where the jagged cliffs met the restless sea. It wasn’t a pretty harbor, not anymore.…