The year was 2274 when humanity’s first tentacles of steam-driven starships reached Xylaris—a world of violet deserts and phosphorescent lagoons. Captain Elias “Lockjaw” Thatcher stood rigid at the gangway of the HSS Brassbird, polished brass gleaming beneath twin suns. Lockjaw fancied himself a paragon of order and precision—every bolt torqued to his exacting spec. Yet […]
“See Life,” they’d christened it—an ironic taunt, given the Mongolian dunes had long slumbered in silence. In the spring of 1934, a motley crew pitched canvas tents beside a collapsed ziggurat, each soul driven by shifting ambitions as mercurial as desert mirages. The morning sun inched over parched earth when Dr. Simon Granger, self-styled “visionary […]
Dr. Elia Renner’s midnight oil burned in two forms: in the low hum of the Genevantis Chrono-Gene Lab and in the spiraling totem on her drafting table. Stacked clay heads—goat, bird, mechanized skull—jutted skyward, each painted in mocking neon that flickered under her single desk lamp. Outside, sheep grazed in the valley; inside, her relatives […]
The West Village gallery palpitated like a living organism. In its restored brownstone halls, “First Date” hung center stage: a rampage of neon loops, an outstretched hand, a screeching bird, and a solitary face locked in ecstatic terror. Under the warm glow of gallery lights, at least 125 luminaries of the art world milled about—curators […]
Beneath the city’s neon arteries, an abandoned subway vault was reborn as Phantasmagoria—an underground art retreat where bleary-eyed creators sought escape from their own white walls and silent studios. The entry tunnel, scrawled with phosphorescent hieroglyphs, led into a cavern of warped mirrors and flickering lanterns. Here, amid damp brick and echoing footsteps, a half-dozen […]
They met at the Rusty Ledger—a speakeasy nestled beneath an overpass, its entrance hidden by a mural so chaotic it looked like someone vomited a rainbow. The sign outside? “COMMIT TAX FRAUD,” Uncle Sam’s grin warped into a dare. Inside, Edison, a freelance motion-graphics whiz with caffeine in his veins, nursed a flat white. Across […]
The Crimson Canvas The fog, a perpetual shroud over Veridia, clung to the cobblestones like a damp, melancholic spirit. It was 1928, and the ancient Eastern European city breathed a heavy, coal-laced sigh. Inspector Viktor Volkov, a man whose sharp mind was often obscured by his own profound weariness, received the call with a sigh. […]
Bram stirred awake to the familiar hiss of the Parabolic Java Brewer—his brass-and-glass muse—spinning its tiny cyclone of steam and ground beans. He cradled that first black sip, eyes drifting to the half-finished mural on his east wall: a giant, copper-veined spider perched atop a swirl of violet smoke. Below it, the pink silhouette of […]
Elara Fenn didn’t believe in magic—at least, not until the night she chased her own shadow into the Blackthorn Hollow. By all accounts, the Hollow was a blasted stretch of gnarled trees and phosphorescent moss that no map would tolerate. Locals whispered of impossible things muttering through the branches: laughing skulls, raving ghosts, even a […]
Ash drifted through the cracked streets like confetti at a funeral, coating shattered billboards and scarred murals in fine gray powder. Tiny finches—with mutant plumage—hopped among the rubble, pecking at scraps of paper stamped with the State’s seal. Hidden in the fractured cornices of ruined façades, lenses the size of teardrops swiveled in silent vigilance. […]
