Fantasy

Yes, You!. Top Story - October 2026.
Hey, you! Yes, you, reading on that device. This is all about you. For now. You may have thought you were about to read a piece of fiction – but is it?
By Julie Lacksonen7 days ago in Fiction
Stitch: The lore of Sara Foxgrave.
Sara didn’t even know why she went out there that morning. She told herself it was just curiosity, just wanting to see how far the construction crew had gotten on the new house, but really it was because she hadn’t come back here since she returned. Not once. The old willow tree still hunched over the hill like it was guarding Lake Downing, its branches rattling in the cold wind, whispering the same secrets they used to whisper when she and Birdi climbed it and pretended they were queens of the whole damn world. The lake hadn’t changed at all. But she had. It felt smaller now, or maybe she did.
By Syl De'Vil7 days ago in Fiction
Command That Broke the World
Stay quiet. I didn’t hear those exact words spoken aloud at first. But I felt them, hanging thick and heavy in the air, pressing against my chest, as clear as any shout. The moment Blaze gave his order, the whole world seemed to hush. The cheering died down to a murmur. The glass stopped falling. Even the wind seemed to hold its breath. And in that sudden stillness, the message settled over everything: See nothing. Hear nothing. Say nothing. Stay quiet.
By Mark Lim 7 days ago in Fiction
Moment the Light Shifted
People moved through the city without knowing that everything could change in a single moment. They walked beneath the towering skyline, bags slung over shoulders, laughing into phones, stopping to buy drinks from roadside stalls. They waited at bus stops, packed into LRT carriages, haggled gently at the market, and called out to friends across crowded pavements. They made plans for the weekend, worried about work or school, dreamed of holidays, of new homes, of ordinary, happy days stretching out ahead. The sun rose over the Petronas Towers and set behind the old shophouses, and life felt steady. Predictable. Safe. No one walked around thinking this could be the last time I would see everything as it is . No one thought they needed to.
By Mark Lim 7 days ago in Fiction
Shadow They Pulled Over Our Eyes
Hide. That was what they did. Not just from the cameras, not just from the crowd, but from us. From the people who trusted them most.
By Mark Lim 7 days ago in Fiction
Sound That Outlasted the Noise
Glass shattered. It started high above the street, the long bank of office windows along the avenue, gleaming golden in the afternoon sun, one moment smooth and perfect, the next splitting open with a sharp, startling crack that cut through the crowd’s roar like a whip. Before anyone could react, the web of fractures spread, racing across pane after pane, until suddenly they gave way, entirely bursting outward in a glittering shower of fine, silver shards that rained down onto the pavement. The sound was everywhere at once: the sharp, brittle tinkle of small pieces, the heavier clatter of larger fragments, the distant snap of something high up giving way completely. Down at street level, the café display windows followed, then the glass panels at the bus stop, then the shopfronts lining the narrow lane, all of them splitting, then spilling their contents onto the road.
By Mark Lim 7 days ago in Fiction
The Ground Gave Way
The ground shook. It started soft, just a faint, thrumming vibration beneath my sneakers so gentle I thought for a second it was just the rumble of a passing lorry, or my own heart beating too fast. Then it grew. The pavement rippled like water. Shopfront windows rattled in their frames. A streetlamp swayed overhead, slow and heavy, and people grabbed at walls, at each other, at anything steady. Children stopped laughing. Conversations cut off mid-sentence. The city that had hummed and bustled only moments before fell abruptly, breathlessly quiet except for the low, deep groan of the earth itself.
By Mark Lim 7 days ago in Fiction
Streets That Looked the Other Way
Cars filled the streets. From as far down as I could see, in every direction, sleek new sedans, dusty hatchbacks, lorries rumbling low, motorcycles weaving between lanes like quick, bright fish. They crawled along Jalan Sultan Ismail, glided past the Petronas Towers, lined the roads around the old city centre, their lights winking gold and red in the afternoon haze. They carried people home from work, families to the night markets, and friends meeting for dinner. They meant movement. Choice. A life unfolding, full and busy and bright. KL didn’t just sit still; it flowed. And nothing made that clearer than the endless, steady stream of cars.
By Mark Lim 7 days ago in Fiction
when the wizard calls
An undercurrent of urgency propels your steps along the brightly lit downtown intersection at which you find yourself. The dark shops blur in your periphery, wispy and stalling. You're moving fast, but your going feels slow. A long bus with an accordion middle sings by, orange and creamy light glowing from its condensate-fogged windows. You pick up the pace and round the corner in a rush, stopping sharply when you spot the bus already coasting up the hill. You can't wait for the next one; you could climb the hill in half the time. Your boss, Dr. Jacolvainth, is paying you a bonus for the inconvenience of checking on his house so late at night, and he implored you to make haste in arriving. So you aren't wearing the best shoes for climbing hills, but you proceed nonetheless. Dr. Jacolvainth's call was a bit of a blur; the connection choppy and his concerns garbled over the line. It's probably just a window letting in the rain, or that the mailman forgot to close the gate. Your steps stick strangely, catching on thick sap, spread across the sidewalk and glowing in the moonlight. A shadow creature rustles, stuck in the sap not far from you, straining slower than it'll take to escape the trap it's in. The lights flicker, and you notice the crooked lamp-pole, knotted with coiling roots, supporting a tree with its trunk split open at the bottom. With the weather lately, it's no surprise the carnivorous maples are active this late in the season. You take a hopping step, and in two more you reach out, scooping up the shadow creature under its belly to pull it from the sap. As you leap clear, your shoe comes off, and you land barefoot as the panicked creature darts away, leaving streaks of shadow in its wake. The lights flicker, and the tree grunts, and hundreds of little, glowing eyes peer back at you from beyond the light. You amble onward up the hill, careful where you step, wondering if you might retrieve your shoe when you're done and could make your way back home. At the top of the hill is another intersection, red lights glowing four ways, with nary a wisp of traffic. The breeze shakes the trees standing taller than the large houses they line, the family type, witnesses to time. A slight tingling finds your cheeks, like static electricity or a fizzy drink, both in the air and the fog pouring in. You press the pedestrian button, and the stoplights remain red, so you tap it again as you realize the fog is actually a long, stretching procession.
By Rooney Morgan7 days ago in Fiction
Hero of the Dark Places
A hero who moved through darkness itself. That was how I thought of Nightveil when I was nine years old and still believed heroes were exactly what they looked like. To me, darkness wasn’t just the absence of light. It was the unlit alleyways behind the sundry shops, where stray dogs barked, and old cans clattered in the wind. It was the flooded monsoon drain tunnels that snaked under the city, where the air smelled of damp earth and rot. It was the back rooms of burning buildings, the spaces too tight, too quiet, too hidden for Blaze’s roaring fire or Frost’s bright ice to reach. Those were the places no one else wanted to go. Those were the places Nightveil belonged.
By Mark Lim 7 days ago in Fiction
Noise That Hid Everything
KL was loud. It was loud from the moment I woke up until the moment I fell asleep: the hum of traffic along Jalan Tun Razak, the call of vendors selling nasi lemak and iced tea, the rumble of the LRT trains gliding above the streets, the chatter of voices mixing in ten different languages. It was the kind of loud that wraps around you like a warm blanket, that makes you feel small but never alone. It meant life. It meant people. It meant the world was moving forward, bright and fast and together.
By Mark Lim 7 days ago in Fiction
Aurelius Ascends (part 3)
At first, the crew thought that what was likely happening to their craft right now was nothing more than a minor navigational anomaly, a glitch, as they had begun sensing a very subtle gravitational tug over the last hour, something that all of the crew, apart from one absent member, had been starting to feel as a slowly growing vibration through the underside artificial gravity plating areas, which , while this would certainly account for the sudden ‘light spring in their steps,’ it was definitely not one that could have explained away the navigational gremlins they were experiencing with their shipwide instrumentation panels though.
By Jonathan Townend8 days ago in Fiction