The bloody throne hall stank of wet iron and rot, and at the heart of it sat Kortul. She had taken her tusks years ago, ground the stumps smooth so that nothing of the common orc remained in her face. What was left was colder. Her skin was the pale […]
Ilza walked at the center of the line, where the others could keep her between them. She was young for an elf, not yet into the fullness of her years, and it showed in the unfinished sharpness of her face, all angles that had not quite settled. Her skin was
The sky had been normal again for a good amount of time, but Jacob still caught people looking up at it sometimes, just checking to make sure it hadn’t gone crimson again. He had watched the broadcast like everyone else. Sitting in his apartment in Chicago, he was eating reheated
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The highway above groaned with morning traffic, and Greg woke to it the way most people wake to an alarm, grudgingly and with his whole body fighting the process. His tent was a single-person backpacking model with a broken zipper, held shut with a braid of zip ties he’d threaded
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I will pour out my spirit on all flesh, and your sons and your daughters shall prophesy, your old men shall dream dreams, your young men shall see visions. I have read Joel 2:28 maybe a hundred times in my life. My grandmother had it cross-stitched on a pillow in
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Martin pressed the record button on the handheld unit and held it close to his mouth as he ducked under the rope the patrol officers had strung between the trees. “October fourteenth, 1972,” he said. “George Washington Park, Centralia. Arrived on scene at approximately nine forty-five in the morning. Initial
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The ad appeared between a promoted post for a meal kit service and a video of someone’s cat, unremarkable enough that Freya almost scrolled past it. Paid Research Study, it read. One Week. Two Thousand Dollars. All accommodations provided. Social behavior observation. Apply now. She stared at it for a
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DIVICORE TECHNOLOGIESInternal Maintenance & Operations SystemDocument Type: Maintenance LogAccess Level: Internal Use Only – MAINTENANCE LOG 0216Date: 02-23-2026Time: 16:42Department ID: SI-PNW-04Employee: Boris MorozovEmployee Number: 4471Division: Server InfrastructureRank: Senior Maintenance TechnicianLog Type: Incident Report Today’s failure rate for RAM units across the floor has doubled compared to the daily average. I
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Zoe had not left her apartment in almost four months. The last time had been a Thursday, a trip to her primary physician to check up on a worrying rash that was developing on her calf. Her father had given her a ride. She had to stare at the patterns
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Henry Callum had made this drive so many times he could have done it half asleep, and on some of the earlier mornings, he nearly had. Forty miles out of Centralia on roads that stopped being roads about twelve miles in, just packed dirt and gravel cutting through the Douglas
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My name is Frank Delacroix, and I am seventy-four years old. I am not a violent man. I have never been a violent man. I have spent the better part of my life volunteering at soup kitchens, attending mass, and doing what I believed to be the work of a
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The house appeared in her search results on a Tuesday morning, nestled between listings that were either too small or too far from town, and Abby had stopped scrolling. She looked at the pictures for a long time. A craftsman-style two-story in Ridgefield, Washington. Good bones, the listing said, and
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The bus reeked of fast food wrappers and recycled air. Benjamin had been sitting in the same position for so long that his lower back had developed a dull, grinding ache he was certain would never fully go away. He shifted in his seat, pressed his forehead to the cold
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The apartment was quiet at 5:47 in the morning. The kind of quiet that sits in a room like a held breath, broken only by the quiet drone of the refrigerator and the distant moan of traffic on the street below. Clarissa moved through it the way she always did,
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March 2nd, 2026 I don’t really know why I’m writing this down. Maybe because it felt too real to just forget about, and I’ve been sitting at my desk for the past hour trying to convince myself it was just a dream. Of course it was just a dream. I’m
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