## The Static Bloom The grit tasted like burnt cinnamon and regret. Elara spat, the phosphorescent dust clinging to her tongue. Below, the pipeline pulsed with a sickly amber glow. A vein throbbing under skin of black silicate. She adjusted…
## The Gilded Fracture The rain hammered Bruges, a relentless drumbeat against the cobblestones. Elias traced a finger across the cool glass of Saint Salvator’s cathedral, the seventeenth-century stained glass shimmering under the failing light. The scent of wet stone…
## Static Bloom The chipped Formica of the diner booth felt cold under Elias’s forearms. Rain hammered against the plasteel windows, blurring the neon glow of “Stella’s Fuel & Feed.” He hadn’t touched his synth-coffee. The scent of burnt protein…
## The Resonance of Ghosts Rain lashed against the windows of Elara’s studio, mimicking the relentless drumming in Julian’s skull. He sat hunched on a worn armchair, staring at his hands – pale, trembling things that felt foreign to him.…
## The Bloom Echo The chipped ceramic mug warmed Leo’s hands, the synth-coffee doing little for the chill that clung to him. Outside the observation dome, the *Artemis VI* shuddered. Not violently, but a low thrum that vibrated through bone.…
## The Cartographer’s Echo Dust motes danced in the violet shafts slicing through Old Man Tiber’s workshop. The light, fractured seven ways over Aestinwy’s sun prisms, tasted like ozone and regret. I ran a thumb across the vellum stretched taut…
## The Ghost Notes The salt spray tasted like regret. Wren traced the chipped Formica of the diner counter, each groove a miniature ocean current mirroring the one churning outside. Coffee, black as pitch, warmed her hands but couldn’t touch…
## The Static Bloom The salt spray stung Elara’s face. Not actual salt, not anymore. Metallic tang, like old blood and static electricity. She braced against the rail of the *Argonaut*, watching the bloom unfold. It wasn’t a color she…
## The Static Bloom Dust motes danced in the single beam of Elara’s lamp. Not sunlight, not anymore. Just filtered glow from a salvaged power cell, barely enough to chase the shadows clinging to the walls of her workshop. The…
## The Scent Collector The salt spray tasted like regret. Elias Thorne, botanist and reluctant ghost-hunter of forgotten smells, gripped the rail of the *Althea*, his knuckles bone-white. The Aegean churned grey beneath a bruised sky, mirroring the static in…
The rain in Dustbowl wasn’t normal rain. It was thick, almost viscous, smelling of iron and something else… decayed roses. Not a pleasant scent, not at all. It clung to everything – the corrugated iron of Sal’s diner, the weathered…
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…