The air in the sublevel corridor tasted metallic, like rusted pipes and static. Dr. Elara Voss pressed her palm against the steel door, feeling the faint vibration of something alive beneath the surface. The vault had been sealed for thirty…
Dr. Elara Voss adjusted her visor as the shuttle descended through the planet’s thick, amber-hued atmosphere. The air shimmered with static, and the sky pulsed like a living thing, shifting between deep violet and a sickly green. Her boots crunched…
The first snow fell on the morning Mara returned to Blackwood, dusting the pine needles and frost-bitten branches with a brittle white sheen. She hadn’t set foot in the town since her brother’s disappearance ten years ago, but the letter—sealed…
The air in the village of Virelle hung thick with the scent of burning pine and damp earth. Kael wiped soot from his hands, his calloused fingers leaving smudges on the iron anvil. The forge’s glow cast long shadows across…
The air smelled like rust and wet stone when Lila first saw the hole. It yawned in the earth behind the abandoned mine, a jagged mouth swallowing the late afternoon light. She crouched, fingers brushing the damp soil, and wondered…
The sun hung low over Valenar, a bruise of molten gold bleeding into the horizon. Kael’s hammer rang against the anvil, each strike sending sparks into the dusk. The forge’s heat clung to his skin, thick as smoke, but he…
The air tasted metallic as Lieutenant Mara Voss stepped onto the crimson soil of Zeta-7, her boots sinking into the dust that shimmered under twin suns. The horizon stretched in jagged waves, a sea of obsidian rock fractured by veins…
The air smelled of rust and pine when Mira found the first bone. She knelt in the dirt, her fingers brushing the jagged edge of a femur, and wondered if it had been there since the mine closed in 1947.…
The air reeked of ozone and rust, a metallic tang that clung to the back of Lena’s throat. She pressed her palm against the cold steel of the shuttle’s hull, feeling the faint hum of failing systems beneath her fingers.…
The air inside the research station tasted like rust and static, a metallic tang that clung to the back of Elara Voss’s throat. She pressed her palm against the observation deck’s reinforced glass, watching the twin suns of Epsilon Eridani…
The first time Lila saw the town, it felt like a painting frozen in time—too still, too perfect. The air smelled of damp earth and distant woodsmoke, and the narrow streets seemed to hush as she walked them. She didn’t…
The air smelled like burnt sugar and damp earth as Mara tightened her grip on the rusted gate, its hinges groaning like a wounded animal. The sun hung low over the horizon, casting long shadows through the skeletal trees that…
The air in the sublevel lab hummed with a low, electric static, like the breath of something vast and unseen. Dr. Elara Voss adjusted her gloves, the latex creaking as she leaned over the containment unit. Inside, the artifact pulsed—softly,…
Clara stepped off the bus, her boots crunching on gravel as the wind tugged at her coat. The town of Black Hollow sat like a wound in the earth, its buildings hunched against the cold. She hadn’t set foot here…
The air reeked of ozone and rust as Captain Mara Voss stepped onto the derelict hull, her boots crunching over shattered plating. The *Erebus* hung in the void like a skeleton, its skeletal frame lit by the pale glare of…