Dark Fantasy
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The Warrior’s Rest
Grasha Ironquiet pulled her woolen shawl closer as she stepped onto the stone porch of her cottage, the morning air carrying the crisp promise of autumn’s deeper embrace. From her doorway, she could see neither Lumenvale’s towering Crystal Spires nor the market square of Thornhaven, though both lay within an easy hour’s journey by horseback. Continue reading
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The Light That Finds Us
The first light of dawn touched the Crystal Spires as Matthias Lightbringer knelt in the small chapel attached to his family’s home, his weathered hands pressed together in the familiar ritual that had shaped his mornings for thirty-seven years. The ancient stones around him seemed to breathe with accumulated prayers, their surfaces worn smooth by Continue reading
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The Compass Within
Kharis Sandstrider pressed her palm against the crystalline surface of the scrying bowl, feeling the heat that radiated from its core—a fragment of concentrated ruby dust that held the memories of a thousand desert storms. The bowl’s surface shimmered with heat mirages, but these weren’t the false visions that plagued ordinary travelers. These were deliberate Continue reading
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Dreams Above the Clouds
What profession do you admire most and why? The crystalline alarm chimed through our family’s modest quarters on Westwind Platform, but I was already awake, pressed against the transparent wall with my nose creating small fog patches on the cool surface. Six-thirty in the morning, same as every day for the past three months since Continue reading
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Between Sky and Sustenance
If you were going to open up a shop, what would you sell? The morning wind-currents carried the scent of my success across Lower Cumulus Isle, mingling the aromas of sizzling meat and fresh-baked bread with the crystalline tang of air that had never touched solid ground. I stood on the narrow platform outside my Continue reading
Chadwick Rye 