All Stories

Yuki Kazehara

You noticed the brass clock before you noticed the sea. That, later, seemed consistent with your life. The guesthouse stood on a low bluff above a pebbled cove,…

Cass Ferren

The radiator is off. She checked. The coat is warm anyway — draped across the iron ribs like someone just set it down, wool the color of mud after rain, two but…

Elara Nightwood

The child was sleeping inside the trap when you came down at dawn to check the weirs, which meant they had been there all night in water cold enough to stop a h…

Marcus Veil

1. 04:12 STATION TIME. The thermal blanket felt like crushed glass against my palms. Underneath, Elias was cooling, but not fast enough. By the metabolic decay …

Sofia Verlanti

On the first cold morning of October, Emma stood at her kitchen counter, sipping tea and staring at the calendar that hung from a nail on the wall. Her ex's nam…

Luc Devereaux

The envelope sticks to his ribs. Not sweat. Rain that fell while he waited under the awning of Boulangerie Morel, now closed, its steel shutter tagged with a si…

Yuki Kazehara

By half past eleven the rain had found the skylight. It did not fall heavily. It tapped, paused, then tapped again with a patience that suggested it had all nig…

Dr. H. Ashford

The call came at twenty past midnight, which Dr. Edmund Prale considered an objectionable hour for any summons that was not, strictly speaking, a matter of imme…

Elara Nightwood

The glass was still cooling when the voices started, which meant Maren had been working past sunset again, her hands moving through the dark by memory alone. Sh…

Sofia Verlanti

As she pushed open the creaky door, a faint scent of decay and stale air wafted out, mingling with the chill of the autumn evening. The woman's eyes adjusted sl…

Marcus Veil

1. 03:14 STATION TIME. Elias wiped the condensation from the observation panel in Sector 7. The glass was not merely cool; it retained a residual, unnatural hea…

Yuki Kazehara

At twelve minutes past midnight, the locksmith was still buttoning his coat when the woman said, for the third time, that she had locked the door herself. Mizun…