Series
Under the Crimson Sky
By Nadeem Shah The sky bled red the evening I returned to Raven Hollow. I hadn’t been back in twelve years—not since the night everything I believed in was shattered. The roads felt narrower, the trees darker, like the whole town was holding its breath, waiting for me to remember what I’d tried so hard to forget.
By Nadeem Shah about a year ago in Fiction
Boar
Ugh. Walking into that flat was like stepping back in time, and not in a good way. I knocked, politely, and got no answer. He's an old guy by now, so maybe he didn't hear me? I knocked louder, and raised my voice. Why did I do that? I was telling myself, it won't be him, anyway, but I must have thought it might be, to keep trying. Guess I have to think that every time, right? Or there's no point. So there was nothing special about this one. Crummy little flat, older guy, living on his own, by the seems of it. Could be him, right? Could be my Da. I wanted it to be him. I wanted some part of my search to be over. I wanted success. Wanted to talk about Ma. Be a step closer to finding my baby brother. I didn't want it to be him. Didn't want to have come from... this. Bang, bang, bang, on the door, determined to get this over with. Get an answer one way or another... "Bloody well come in, will you, you stupid woman!" This yelling, halfway between peevish and gruff, came from the bowels of the place. And "bowels" is the right word because it was shitty. The door was grubby and peeling. There was a faint stink of fried fish, with an overlay of damp, and hints of piss. Right as I was curling up my nose at the smell, the memory of that fat social worker slammed into my mind. The judgement dripping off her, the way she wrinkled her nose. I ironed the expression off my face and raised my fist to knock again. A stumping and muttering told me my host was coming to the door. Little chains rattled, singing his paranoia. As if anyone would want to get in there. As if the stench didn't do a fine job of keeping people away. Belligerent, he threw the door wide and stood there glaring at me. His eyes looked watery and blank, and his vest was saggy and stained. "Well?" he demanded. "Aren't you going to come in, then?" I stepped over the threshold, and the smell and gloom hit me full force. The decades shrivelled away like a crisp packet in the microwave. Leaving me freshly exposed like a peeled shrimp. I could have been a skinny little kid again. Always hungry, always sick. "You should be a woman," the old man grumbled. I wasn't sure what to say to that. We sat in the kitchen and I tried to explain why I was there, but he just stared at me as if he was waiting for something. Or he got angry. I couldn't figure out what he was angry about. I think he was saying some things only in his head, so I was missing chunks of it. He didn't offer me anything. I remembered all the people who had offered me tea or juice. The kind woman with the dented tin of biscuits. He sat there, on a rickety chair, as if he was a king on a throne. I felt as if he expected me to serve him. I wondered if I should, if it might make him warm up to me and answer my questions. Or would it just offend him more? When he muttered about "queers" I held my temper this time. Remembering that young man in the pub, who could have been my brother... and now I'd never know. "Would you mind if if I used your bathroom? " I asked. He shrugged and grunted, and made no move from his chair. I didn't go to the bathroom. With a furtive step, I nosed into the place he probably spent most of his waking time. Threadbare carpet and armchair, both green. The sort that fades easily to a dull brown in the memory. An ancient TV, a mantelpiece over an ancient gas fire. My heart quickened when I saw the pictures on the mantel. This was it. This was him. That was me. Us. Ma. He was so vague and forgetful, I didn't even go into the bathroom and pull the flush. I walked right back into the kitchen, determined, now, to make him recognise me. "Da?" I said, "Da, I know it's you. I need to talk to you. It's important." He "humphed " again, a bit of spit flying from his lip, his eyes pale and cold. "Don't be daft, boy," he said. "I'm not... I haven't got..." He trailed off into muttering for a few moments, and then raised his voice, whiny like a child. "Am I minding him, am I? Oh, shit, and I don't know where he is..." I was put in mind of a radio being tuned in and out, landing on different stations, or giving static. "D'you think that Shona will know where he is? Skinny lad. Dark hair. Mammy's boy. But I can't lose him! Oh, she'll be so mad..." "Da!" I said it a little louder this time, put my hands on his shoulders. "Da! Look at me. It's me. Isaiah. Your boy. I'm here." "What? Who..." His face was slack for a moment - static again - and then he roared to life, knocking my arms away and shouting. Face flushed, eyes bulging. "You try that inside!" he was yelling, "You'll learn!" His shirt sleeves slipped up his wrists, and I glimpsed the tattoos there. Maybe I should leave and come back another day? I'll make a plan. Avoid setting him off. Get him to remember me. Somehow. My resolve crumbled. Does he even know he has another son? How can he even tell me anything about him at all? His yelling had dissolved into a sneer. "Wipe your face," he told me. "Bunch of pansies," he added. The front door slammed behind me.
By L.C. Schäferabout a year ago in Fiction
Chapter 9: Dead zone east . Content Warning.
Silence lay heavy across the northern scar. No birds. No wind. Only white ash falling like snow. Aya stood at the edge of a crater deeper than memory. A graveyard, not of bodies, but of forgotten machines. Below her feet were shattered engines shaped like beasts. Steel skulls half-buried in frozen dust, eyes dim forever. They weren’t made for transport or peace only war. This was where the giants had fallen, and been erased. The boy knelt and traced ancient symbols in the dirt. He wasn’t speaking much anymore. Something inside had broken. Aya didn’t press him. She felt it too. A pressure that said, “Turn back,” but gave no reason. Lightning forked in the sky without sound. The clouds were wrong shaped like spines and twisted limbs. Ahead stood a lone tower, collapsed, leaning into the earth. It looked like it had tried to crawl away before dying. Inside, bones. Human and not. Arranged like prayer. Each rib cage carved with numbers, some still glowing faint. They weren’t just soldiers they were test subjects. People who had held the second disk too long. Aya found a name among the dead. It wasn’t hers, but she knew it: Jorah Talem. Once a commander, once a traitor, once a father. His story was banned, but here it waited, bleeding through. The boy screamed, and a door opened underground. No mechanism. No key. It just wanted them to see. They descended down a staircase made of rusted memory. At the bottom: silence thick enough to drown in. In the center, a pedestal. On it, the third piece. Black stone, cold to the touch, humming with something alive. Aya didn’t reach for it she remembered the warning. One saves. One destroys. But neither can be undone. “I’m not ready she whispered, but her voice shook. The boy stood back, tears dried into his cheeks. “You were chosen before you were born,” he said. His voice wasn’t his. It was someone else's memory. The pedestal pulsed like a dying heartbeat. As Aya stepped forward, everything around her changed. The walls turned to mirrors. The mirrors showed her worst fears. Zair burning. Her mother erasing her own name. Herself alone. She fell. Not from force but from truth. This was never about saving the world. It was about deciding which version of the world survives. Peace without memory. Or truth with eternal war. She picked up the stone. The tower roared. The ground split open like a mouth. The Cradle’s core awoke, miles beneath their feet. And something old began to rise toward them. She turned to the boy except he was gone. Not vanished. Replaced. In his place stood a stranger with the same eyes. “Not all of us were ever children,” he said coldly.
By Hazrat Usman Usmanabout a year ago in Fiction
Chapter 8 : DEAD ZONE EAST
A howl split the tunnel like a curse thrown across time. Not animal. Not human. Something entirely in between. It echoed as if pain itself had learned how to speak. Aya didn't look back, because she couldn’t afford to. Behind them, the vault’s walls pulsed with bleeding red light. Zair's scream was still etched into the stone like it was alive. The memory didn’t just linger the it chased. And it wasn’t alone anymore. Something had followed. The boy stumbled again, the metal disk in his hands trembling. Aya caught his wrist, dragging him toward the second gate. The mouth of stone hissed open as they stepped inside. Air turned dead. No echo. Just pressure like a drowning grip. Inside, the chamber lit up from the inside out. Pale white energy bathed the walls in a frozen glow. Hovering above the floor was a figure half-light, half-memory. Her presence froze the bones and whispered without moving. Above her floated a name: Thalel. She was elegant, ancient, and impossible to fully see. A silver-eyed ghost with a blade fused to her spine. Not human. Not spirit. Something older than war. “You were not meant to survive this long,” she said. Aya stepped forward, her voice steady despite the terror. “Then why did we?” she demanded through clenched teeth. Thalel blinked, and the walls turned the color of warning. “Because someone betrayed time,” the voice echoed everywhere. The murals moved now, twisting history into motion. Cities devoured themselves in flame. Children vanished in silence. And always the Cradle’s mark, seared onto every ruin. The boy screamed, not from pain but recognition. He saw something in the corner, crawling toward them. It had bones but no skin, and it moved like memory. Aya grabbed him close as shadows warped the light. Thalel lifted a finger, freezing the creature mid-climb. “Memory can be mercy,” she whispered, eyes dimming. “But this world chose vengeance over forgiveness.” In the center, a table rose and formed glowing rings. Each ring spun like a clock made from truth. They saw how the Cradle was built in secret. How humans stole pieces to weaponize memory. And how the final war was born from forgotten guilt. Aya touched the center, and visions shattered her mind. A flood of people burning thoughts just to stay sane. Mothers forgetting their children to keep them hidden. Fathers erasing names from graves to avoid tracking. She fell to her knees, the pressure unbearable. The disk left the boy’s hand and slid into the table. Thalel’s voice split into a thousand whispering tongues. Each voice said the same thing, layered with sorrow: “You must find the third piece beneath the grave of giants. And you must choose between mercy or memory. One will save you. One will destroy the rest.” Then silence, before everything began to crack. The ceiling trembled. Not from age but something entering. The enemy had followed them into memory’s core. Thalel began to dissolve into pixelated ash. Aya screamed, “What are they?” but the answer came soft. “They are what you would become… if you fail.” Suddenly, the symbol burned into her skin triangle in circle. She was marked as Keeper. The last of her kind. And outside, war had already begun again.
By Hazrat Usman Usmanabout a year ago in Fiction
The Candle That Burned Out
The shop shouldn’t have existed. It sat between a bookstore and an abandoned bakery, tucked away on a street that seemed even longer than it was. There was no sign on the door—just the faint scent of cinnamon and something old, something old.
By Echoes of Lifeabout a year ago in Fiction
Goldfish
Another visitor. All the time. All day. Knock Knock Knocking. Hello? Hello can you hear me in there? Sir? Are you okay? Usually women. Bloody women. Nag nag nag. This one's not a woman. He's a boy. A man. Young though. Dunno who he is. Nice looking. Not like that. I'm not one of them queers. He calls me Da. Daft boy. I'm not his Da. I'd know my own son... Wouldn't I? If I had one. Do l have one? I'm sure I'd know. Maybe not though. Heh heh.
By L.C. Schäferabout a year ago in Fiction
