Fantasy

The Flight of the Wounded
She moved as quickly as she could, one hand pressed against her wounds, trying to disappear into the trees. The wound wasn’t physical. There was no blood soaking through her shirt, no jagged tear in her skin. But it felt like it. It felt like a hole had been punched through her sternum, leaving a cavity that whistled with every breath. It was the wound of being known. Of being seen not as the hero, not as the villain, but as the messy, contradictory, broken human in between.
By Mark Lim 2 months ago in Fiction
The Last Shadow
Even now, after everything, someone still believed they could fight me. The voice came from the tree line. Not a shout. Not a threat. But a statement. Cold. Calculated. Familiar.
By Mark Lim 2 months ago in Fiction
Aurelius Ascends. Top Story - September 2026.
Aurelius Ascends had spent the best part of fifteen years shifting from a single figment of a dream to a glossy digital image on a one-hundred-inch computer screen, eventually realized by SpaceCorp's head designer, Lisa Scanlon, and put on the drawing board.
By Jonathan Townend2 months ago in Fiction
The Infinite Ceiling
For a moment, all I saw was the sky above. It wasn’t the sky from the driver’s seat, framed by the rectangle of the windshield and filtered through tinted glass. It wasn’t the sky from the balcony of a high-rise, distant and detached, viewed from a height that made the world below look like a toy set.
By Mark Lim 2 months ago in Fiction
Mordent's Lament (0.5)
Chapter Two Part I: The Morning Sully wakes up cold with the sunrise shining on his face. That's the first wrong thing, before he even opens his eyes—the specific, bone-deep cold of a body that's been alone for hours, not the warm weight of Madi curled against his side where she fell asleep. He sits up fast, the blanket sliding off him, and the second wrong thing hits him before his mind's even finished processing the first: the grove is empty. The truck bed is empty. The whole gray, fog-damp clearing is empty except for him.
By Matias Costa2 months ago in Fiction
Christmas Came on the Fifteenth of September
The First Decoration At seven o’clock on the morning of 15th September, Arthur Bennett opened his curtains and discovered that Christmas had arrived three months early. A large illuminated reindeer stood on the opposite pavement. Its head moved mechanically from side to side, although no cable connected it to anything. Red and green lights had been wound around every lamppost, and a silver star hung above the entrance to Hawthorn Close.
By Alan Spencer2 months ago in Fiction
Really, Pastels?. Top Story - September 2026.
It suddenly stinks around here and it’s not the stench of rotting pumpkins. Something smells too sickly sweet, something that doesn’t belong.
By Elizabeth Butler2 months ago in Fiction
The Rotting Wreaths of Winterveil. Top Story - September 2026.
It was a truly tacit place, Winterveil —with unpredictable, looping weather and calendars that barely rang true. You would think students had grown accustomed to living such a life, but most of them had no idea, no clue of what world they had been born into.
By K.H. Obergfoll2 months ago in Fiction
Future Disguise
How does a dream that’s interpreted as a miracle become a nightmare in reality? A question that Ruemaq had in mind when his eyes shot wide open. His skin was extremely slippery and the bed allowed his body to crease itself into a puddle. Ruemaq rested his hand on his forehead. “What is up with the heat today?!”
By Devond Devoe2 months ago in Fiction
The Prism of Impact
A rainbow-colored blast struck me in the chest and sent me crashing backward onto the ground. It wasn’t pain. Not exactly. It was a sensation, amplified to a frequency that my nervous system had spent twenty-three years trying to mute. It was every color I had ever suppressed, every emotion I had ever flattened, every truth I had ever grayed out, hitting me all at once with the force of a freight train.
By Mark Lim 2 months ago in Fiction
The Supernova of the Self
A burst of light exploded from inside. It wasn’t external. It didn’t come from the sun, which was now high and bright above the tree line. It didn’t come from the headlights of a passing car or the flash of a camera. It came from the center of my chest, radiating outward through my ribs, my skin, my clothes, until the world around me seemed to bleach white with its intensity.
By Mark Lim 2 months ago in Fiction
The Vessel of the Unchosen
A body built for a hero. I looked down at myself, really looked for the first time in years. Not at the clothes, not at the posture, not at the scars I’d learned to hide beneath collars and sleeves. But at the architecture. The blueprint of me.
By Mark Lim 2 months ago in Fiction