## The Cartographer’s Shadow The dust tasted of old parchment and regret. Elara spat, wiping a smear across the worn leather of her glove. The shard pulsed beneath her fingertips—a frantic heartbeat in the cavernous Archive. It depicted a harvest…
## Glitchpoint The desert shimmered, heat rising from cracked earth like a phantom city. Rain hadn’t kissed this stretch of Arizona in six months. Jax wiped sweat from his brow, the gritty film clinging to his skin. He squinted at…
## The Static Bloom The air tasted like ozone and old pennies. Not sharp, metallic, but *layered* – a taste that clung to the back of your throat. I adjusted the regulator on my breather mask, the hiss a small…
## The Cartographers of Echo The rain tasted like rust. Elara wiped her cheek, the metallic tang clinging to her tongue. The corrugated iron roof of the makeshift clinic vibrated with each gust, a relentless percussion against her skull. Inside,…
## The Static Bloom The dust tasted like old pennies and regret. Kaelen spat, the grit clinging to his tongue. Below, the turquoise swirl of Xylos pulsed, a living ocean contained within a geodesic skin. Not *real* ocean, not anymore.…
## Echo Bloom The air tasted of static and regret. Elder traced a finger across the hull of the *Dust Moth*, its metal cool even through his worn gloves. Outside, the nebula bled purple and bruised orange, a cosmic bruise…
The air tasted like rain and cinnamon. It clung to my skin, a thick, viscous sweetness that made it hard to breathe, yet I didn’t want to. Not really. Because breathing was difficult anyway. Mostly, I just drifted. Drifted through…
The rain hammered against the corrugated iron roof of the Helix, a sound like a thousand frantic fingers drumming. Below, the city – or what was left of it – bled into an oppressive grey. Layers upon layers of concrete…
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.…
The alley smelled of static and overripe fruit. Clementine didn’t bother flinching. She hadn’t in years. Rain, or what passed for it—a chemical mist Arcadia Corp seeded to “regulate atmosphere”—slicked the corrugated metal walls. Above, the ruined skyscrapers clawed at…
The rain tasted like static. Old Man Tiber, they called him, though nobody knew if he *was* an old man anymore, or just a construct wearing the skin of one. His shop, a cubbyhole wedged between a noodle stall and…
The neon smeared across the slick pavement, fractured by the downpour. Rain tasted like ozone and regret. Kai traced the glyphs blossoming on the wall – not spray paint, but *rain graffiti*, ephemeral code blooming in the moisture. It pulsed,…
The chrome of Neo-Kyoto slicked with perpetual drizzle. Rain wasn’t water anymore—nano-bots, designed to cleanse the air, but leaving a greasy film on everything. I navigated the market, dodging projections shimmering from every storefront. Old Christmases, graduations, first kisses—memories for…