Lysanthemum’s fingers, stained lavender from the emotion threads, trembled. Each strand pulsed with a memory, a longing, a joy—the echoes of lives connected. She’d spent decades harvesting these luminous filaments, weaving them into the grand tapestry of the city of…
The October chill bit through Thomas’s patched coat, each gust off the Thames a slap in the face. Cobblestones slicked with drizzle reflected the gaslights in distorted halos. He tasted soot, even with the damp air. It clung to everything…
The chipped stone bit into my palms as I scaled the tenement wall. Dublin throbbed below, a raw nerve stretched tight. Not from the fighting, not yet. It was the *other* thing. The shadow slipping between alleys, faster than a…
The maces, bound with tarnished silver, swung in practiced arcs. Each impact on the training dummies echoed the weight of generations. Old grievances. The Elkhire. They hadn’t stood shoulder-to-shoulder in centuries, not since the Split. Now, a shadow army massed…
The fever rattled Janek’s bones. Not the heat, though that clung like wet wool, but the *seeing*. It began with soot. The way it swirled from the flues, settling not as darkness, but as… shapes. Patterns. Like the butcher’s tally…
The chipped gargoyle warmed beneath Zeush’s feet, the stone radiating the day’s faint heat. Below, the city of Veridium pulsed—a network of shadowed alleys and glittering towers, all choking on ambition. He adjusted his grip, talons scoring the weathered stone.…
The fog tasted of coal and secrets. August clung to Violet’s threadbare shawl, the damp chilling him to the bone despite the summer month. Parliament House loomed, a gray beast breathing the city’s grime. Violet, barely ten, slipped between the…
The salt spray tasted of regret. Old Man Tiber, they called the lighthouse, though no one remembered a man ever tending it. Just the mechanism, grinding gears and a lens the size of a carriage wheel. It sat on Widow’s…
Act 1: The Discovery & Isolation The rain in Seattle was a constant, grey companion. Elias Thorne found a certain comfort in it, a mirroring of the relentless data streams that consumed his life. He’d spent the last five years…