Category: Stories Expanded Version

From: Crown of Moonlit Tempest 1774 Segment 1: THE COLOR OF SMOKE OVER KETH VAAL There is a color that fire makes when it has been burning long enough to forget what it was burning. Not orange. Not the clean gold of a forge properly fed. This is older than that, darker at the edges,…

From: Menu 9 Philosophers Stone Soup The Ink That Preceded Memory — being an account drawn from the personal record of Carenthis, Keeper of the Old Text, as transcribed from the sigil-memory of the Skull Cap, date unverifiable by conventional means — There is a library in the second sub-level of the Archontic Vault of…

From: Voidblade Segment 1 The Parchment That Should Not Have Survived The dust in this place had a texture that was almost deliberate, which was the first thing that was wrong. Not wrong in the way of structural instability, though there was that also — the left-hand wall of the antechamber had come away from…

From: Spines 842 of the Auditors Bristle I. The Ledger Before the World I had supposed, in the final tally of my breathing years, that death would present itself as a closing of accounts — a ruled line drawn beneath the last entry, a summation, a balance carried forward into whatever silent archive awaits the…

From: Tengrism 842 of the Gale Step Rapier   1. The Morning Before the Sky Broke The morning the sky broke was a morning like every other morning, which is the whole point, and I need you to understand that before I tell you about any of the rest of it, because if you do…

From: Tengrism 741 of the Wind Thread Duelist 1. The Duel at Dawn’s Edge The grass was wet. It was always wet at this hour. Kirral stood where the grass met the stones and waited. The sky had not yet decided what color it would be. Gray, perhaps. Or that pale thing that came before…

From: Animal Spirit 47 of the Fox Hunter Segment 1: The Last Light Before Dark The sun dropped below the canopy. Kereth stopped walking. He had stopped three times in the last hour. Each time he told himself he knew where he stood. Each time he lied. The forest had been his territory for fifteen…

From: Coglings Segment 1: The Dust Settles Wrong The light comes in wrong through the fractured skylights, slanting at angles that make Vrisk’s compound vision ache, each of the 1,847 pairs of eyes registering the discontinuity differently, so that the workshop appears to shimmer and pulse with contradictions—here brightness, there shadow, everywhere the slow dance…

From: Echoing Blade 67 Segment 1: The Mountain’s Birth Song The mountain did not give up its secrets easily. Kael had been climbing for three days. His water was gone. His rations were nearly finished. The wind cut through his cloak like it had a personal grudge against warmth. But the song kept pulling him…

From: Symphony Automata 1. The Weight of Starlight He woke in darkness and the darkness was singing. Not singing as mortals understood the word. Not melody shaped by throat and tongue and the crude mechanics of breath. This was the sound of spheres turning in their prescribed courses. The mathematics of eternity given voice. He…

From: Kahuna 555 of the Unbroken Testimony Segment 1: The Weight of Dust The dawn came the same as it always had, indifferent to ownership, indifferent to papers signed and sealed and stamped with the weight of law that was not law but theft dressed in the clothing of respectability, and he stood there in…

From: Radiant Wingguards 1. The Descent of Stars The firmament did shatter like unto glass most precious, and through that rending did I fall—nay, not fall, for such crude terminology doth ill befit the majesty of celestial transit—I descended, yea, with purpose most divine did I pierce the veil between the eternal realm and this…

From: Serenity Breeze recipe 1. The Weight Before Dawn The night did not begin as nights usually did, with the slow loosening of the world and the soft surrender of thought. Instead, it gathered weight. It pressed down, gently at first, like a hand resting too long on the shoulder, familiar enough to be ignored…

From: Alchemic Homunculi The First Spark The hour approached midnight when I first beheld the fruit of my labors—that moment of unholy genesis which would forever mark the boundary between the man I had been and the architect of new life I was destined to become. The obsidian walls of my laboratory seemed to press…

Saga of the First Sovereign Etcher Expanded from: Aque Mist Etching Stylus of the Sovereign Quill 728 The Dream’s Fractured Call From the shadowed depths of my restless slumber, I, Aeloria, found myself ensnared within the labyrinthine folds of a dream so vivid it seemed to claw its way from the ancient abyss, its tendrils…

From: Serpents Scent Perfume Segment 1: The Yearning Shadow In the sable embrace of midnight, where the stars dared not linger, Kaelith, the Whisperer, stood poised at the threshold of a world untamed, their heart a pendulum swinging betwixt dread and delirium. The deep woods of Saṃsāra loomed before them, a labyrinth of gnarled shadows…

From: The Resilient Vanguard Title: The Shattered FoundationsIt is a truth, though not universally acknowledged, that a world in the throes of calamity must awaken in its people a spirit both bold and unyielding, lest despair claim dominion over hope. In the village of Eldervale, nestled in a verdant crook of Saṃsāra’s endless embrace, the…

From: Helm of the Valiant Act I: The Weight of a Whisper Title: The Fading Fields And so it came to pass that a great stillness fell upon the lands of Abbevillian, a malady not of the flesh but of the spirit of the world itself. I, Kaelen, who had known no greater joy than…

From: Grullakar 153 “The Sky Was Cracked”As spoken in the voice of Akophnex, Sand-Reader of Dhalren-Ka, upon the Clay-Tiles of Silence. And lo, in the season when the moons were twain upon the heavens, and their light was mingled as silver poured into brass, the firmament above was rent. It was not rent by thunder,…

From: Tribal 113 of the Gatherers Compass The Green Veil Descends – Sister of Two Stones A shimmer—a tear in the world’s fabric—and we are here. The village—born in a breath—stands unsteady, houses of wood and vine, roofs of leaf and hope, trembling under a sky too vast. My feet—bare—sink into earth, damp, alive, pulsing.…

From: Transform 554 of the Skittering Heart The Weight of the Stone The world was dust and noise. Then it was quiet. The quiet was a bad thing. It was a heavy thing, like a blanket made of stone. The dust settled in his throat and he coughed. The cough was a small, dry sound…

From: Turkish Kismet 777 of the Fortunate Hand The Fading Horizon The sea stretched out flat and endless under the dying sun. I stood at the prow of the Sea Bird, my hands gripping the rail until the wood bit into my palms. The ship creaked beneath me, a good ship, solid oak heart that…

From: Amulet of Eternal Cycles     The Unwritten Page It is a truth universally unacknowledged by those who live in the fleeting light of a single day that a library is not a place of answers, but a monument to the infinity of questions. Here, in the Atheneum of Dust and Echoes, where the silence…

From: Luminous Nightstalkers Part 1: The Genesis of Guardianship The Bleeding Archives It is a chilling recollection, one that even now, across the gulf of uncounted years, can summon a tremor to the hand that pens these words, a phantom coldness that seeps from the very stones of this now formidable Conclave. For in those…

From: Predator Gaze Spyglass Act I: The Gift of Sight Segment 1: Where Mountains Touch the Sky     Character: Eldric, Guardian of the High Places It is said by those who dwell in valleys and plains, who never climb where stone pierces the eternal mists, that to ascend a mountain is to rise toward the…

From: Essence Extractor 33 Whispers of the Maker: (As recounted by Ravona, Storykeeper of the Grand Archives). I entered the Grand Library at twilight’s hush, when torches but flickered along the ancient walls, and each corridor exhaled the solemn perfume of parchment and dust. Above, the high-arching vaults soared, etched by craftsmen long passed, who…

From: Aether Amplifier Bracelet The Whisper of Forgotten Magic: The forest breathed around El, a living tapestry of emerald and gold, dappled with the sun’s gentle caress. Ancient trees, their gnarled limbs heavy with moss and time, stood sentinel over the path, their leaves whispering secrets to the wind. El, a wanderer by nature and…

From: Symbol 23 of the Tripping Step The Honey-Smeared Path (Character: Jinx) Right then, the air hung thick and heavy, a right proper stew of sweat, sawdust, and the sort of anticipation that tickles the back of your throat like a feather dipped in fizzy lemonade. It was the day of the menagerie, see, and…

From: Minion 42 Alewifes Bubbling Cauldron The Vault’s Empty Pedestal (Character: Lady Isolde Ironheart) The chill in the vault was not merely a matter of temperature, though it was indeed cold, as befitting a chamber designed to house artifacts of such power. No, the chill that settled upon Lady Isolde Ironheart’s shoulders, a sensation far…

From: Ephemeral Dream Pops A Flicker in the Gloaming (Perspective: Selune the Moonlit (the Wisp)) Moonlight pools in quiet hollows of the grove, a shimmering veil that I call home. I drift upon silver threads, neither here nor there, yet intimately bound to the hush of trees and the delicate hum of nocturnal blooms. My…