How would you describe yourself to someone who can’t see you? The sandstone walls pressed close around us in this forgotten catacomb beneath the Spice Merchants’ Guild, and I could hear your breathing change when the last torch guttered out. The darkness here is absolute—the kind that swallows light so completely that even my forge-fire Continue reading

What traditions have you not kept that your parents had? The crystalline notification chimed softly against the window of my modest workshop, its harmonic frequency calibrated to penetrate even the deepest concentration. I lifted my eyes from the delicate clockwork mechanism I’d been repairing—a purely mechanical timepiece from the outer territories, the kind that operated Continue reading

Was today typical? Gareth Cloudwright’s callused hands trembled as he signed off on the manifest for the seventh wind-ship in four hours, the parchment growing damp with perspiration that had nothing to do with Aethermoor’s perpetually temperate climate. The crystalline loading dock beneath his feet hummed with the constant vibration of cargo lifts rising and Continue reading

How would you describe yourself to someone? Your question settles in the air between us like morning mist, deceptively simple yet impossibly complex. How would I describe myself to someone? The inquiry that sends most souls reaching for familiar anchors—their name, their profession, their birthplace—becomes a labyrinth for one such as me. I pause, watching Continue reading