The Child of Light The golden light was warm. It wrapped around Mira like a blanket, like a memory, like a dream she had forgotten she had dreamed. The child stood before her, small and still, her dark eyes bright, her dark hair falling over her forehead. She wore a simple dress of white linen, … Read more
The Door The darkness did not lift. It pressed against Mira from all sides, cold and heavy, like the weight of a thousand graves. She stood alone in the void, her hands empty, her heart pounding, her breath shallow. The song was everywhere — in her skull, in her bones, in her blood. She understood … Read more
The First Dreamer The darkness did not lift. It pressed against Mira from all sides, cold and heavy, like the weight of a thousand years. The woman stood before her, her silver eyes bright, her white hair floating in a wind that did not exist. Her dress of gray silk shimmered with every breath, as … Read more
The Corridor of Voices The corridor was filled with sleepers. Thousands of them. They stood shoulder to shoulder, their silver eyes fixed on Mira, their lips moving in that endless, silent song. The hum was louder here, vibrating in her chest, pulsing in her skull, making her teeth ache. Zander walked ahead of her, his … Read more
The Awakening The cryogenic bay became chaos. Pods opened across the vast chamber, one after another, their glass retracting, their fluids draining, their occupants sitting up with silver eyes and blank faces. Hundreds of them. Thousands. They moved in unison, their heads turning toward the ceiling, their lips moving in silent song. Mira pressed herself … Read more
The Dreamers The sleepers began to wake on the fifty-sixth day. Not all of them. Not most of them. But enough. Enough to notice. Enough to fear. Enough to scream. The cryogenic bay was on Deck Seven, a vast chamber of rows and rows of pods, their occupants frozen in suspended animation, waiting for the … Read more
The Silent Sector The Odyssey crossed into the Silent Sector on the forty-third day. Mira stood on the observation deck, watching the stars change. They were dimmer here, older, scattered across the void like dying embers. The space between them was wider, darker, emptier. The ship’s sensors registered nothing — no radio waves, no heat signatures, no … Read more
The Signal The signal appeared at the edge of the galaxy on a Tuesday, but Mira Voss did not hear it until Thursday. She was in her lab on the research vessel Odyssey, surrounded by screens and speakers and instruments designed to listen to the silence between stars. She had been studying the remnants of dead … Read more
The Singing Dark The signal appeared at the edge of the galaxy on a Tuesday. No one knew where it came from. No one knew what it wanted. No one knew why it was singing. The colonists of Aethelburg heard it first. Then the sleepers. Then the ships. Then everyone. The singing spread like a … Read more
The Lighthouse Keeper’s Daughter Chapter 30 : The Calm Before the Storm (Reprise) The fifty thousand dollars from the preservation grant arrived on a Monday, deposited directly into Fiona’s bank account. She stared at the balance on her phone, her finger tracing the numbers, unable to quite believe that they were real. Fifty thousand dollars. … Read more
