The salt-kissed air bit at Elara’s cheeks as she climbed the lighthouse stairs, her boots echoing against the rusted metal. The storm had blown itself out hours ago, leaving the coast in a brittle stillness. She’d come to clear out…
## The Loom of Echoes Rain lashed against the corrugated iron roof, a frantic drumbeat mimicking Elara’s pulse. The workshop smelled of damp wool and ozone—a familiar scent, a comfort in the relentless grayness of Dustbowl, Nebraska. She adjusted her…
## The Weaver’s Bloom The dust tasted like regret. It coated everything in Veridium – the crumbling facades of jade-carved buildings, the cracked paving stones under Elara’s boots, even the inside of her throat. Veridium was dying. Everyone knew it.…
## The Stillness Echo The rain smelled like wet asphalt and regret. Elias pulled his collar higher, the damp chill sinking into his bones as he watched her. Amelia sat on the park bench, head bowed, a city symphony of…
## The Chroma Pact Rain lashed against the corrugated iron roof of Maeve’s workshop, a frantic percussion that mirrored the knot tightening in her stomach. The smell of ozone and burnt copper permeated the air, a familiar scent that usually…
## The Static Between The salt spray tasted like regret on Old Man Hemlock’s lips. He adjusted the focusing lens of the fresnel, the beam slicing through the November gloom like a hot knife. Three decades at North Sentinel Rock…
## The Sunken Chorus The chipped ceramic warmed Maya’s palm. Not with heat, exactly. More like a thrumming silence. She traced the spiral grooves etched into its surface – not by hand, she suspected, but *grown*. It felt…familiar. Like a…
## 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…
## Echo Bloom The rain tasted like static. Not unpleasant, precisely, but leaving a metallic bloom on the tongue. Old Man Tiber, perched on the rusted hull of a freighter salvaged from before the Lift, spat a brown fleck into…