The air reeked of smoke and iron as Clara tightened her grip on the revolver, its cold steel a lifeline against the chaos. The barn’s wooden walls groaned under the weight of bullets, splinters raining down like hail. Her breath…
The first time Maya heard the whisper, she was scrubbing the kitchen floor, her fingers raw from the abrasive cleaner. The sound slithered through the house like a snake in the grass—soft, deliberate, and wrong. She froze, the sponge dangling…
The first time Lila found the key, it was tucked inside a hollow in the old oak behind her grandmother’s cottage. She’d been twelve, chasing fireflies through the dunes, when her boot struck something solid. The metal glinted in the…
## The Cartographer’s Cipher The rain smelled of ozone and damp asphalt, clinging to everything like a second skin. Elias traced the condensation on the window of The Correspondence House, watching cars blur past in streaks of red and white.…
The rain tasted like salt and regret. I watched it sheet down the corrugated iron roof of the Fisherman’s Rest, a pub clinging to the edge of Valoria, a village that seemed determined to dissolve back into the bruised grey…
The rain tasted like salt and regret. I watched it sheet down the corrugated iron roof of the Fisherman’s Rest, a pub clinging to the edge of Valoria, a village that seemed determined to dissolve back into the bruised grey…
The chill bit, even through Gwen’s gloves. Frost orchids. Not the pale, brittle kind you found clinging to dying branches, but shimmering, almost *alive* with an inner light. Each petal pulsed with a lavender glow, mirroring the bruised twilight sky.…