Category: Fiction
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Chapter 14: Can’t Be Crazy An hour later, Apricot was on her knees in her bathroom, gripping the cold rim of the toilet as bile burned its way up her throat. The retching came in waves, each one wringing her…
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Chapter 13: Simon Says A deep, weathered voice rolled through the chamber. “Report. What have you gathered about Roe’s death.” In the heart of Okabe’s decaying city lodge, two men in suits stood before a gilded throne. Neon from the barred windows bled weakly…
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Chapter 12: Shelf Life The fluorescent lights inside Ichigari Grocery hummed their usual dead note. Apricot swiped her ID, slipped behind the counter, and clocked in. Her hands still trembled from the walk. The pop song was gone from her earbuds — she’d…
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Chapter 11: Morning Light Morning sun cut through the blinds in pale bars across the breakfast table. For once, the Signa home felt still in a way that didn’t unsettle her. Winifred had come home. That alone changed the air.…
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As recorded by the Imperial Chronicler’s Office, Azure Kingdom You hold in your hands an account of the world as it stands in the year 900 AE. I am a humble servant of the Imperator’s court, tasked with documenting the…
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Chapter 10: Worry Not Apricot twisted beneath her blankets. Midnight lay silent, but whispers crept through the plaster, soft and damp and patient, threading along the walls and flickering in time with the red blink of her alarm. Something else…
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Chapter 9: Trial By Fire Apricot pushed through the automatic doors and the store’s noise cut off behind her like a sealed room. The parking lot lay mostly empty, a few cars scattered among oil puddles that caught the neon…
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Chapter 8: Midnight Blues A single streetlamp buzzed overhead, its filament spitting a weak yellow pulse. Beneath it, something shuddered. It was almost a man, but the form sagged and quivered as though struggling to remember the shape it should…
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Chapter 7: Collateral The corridor ended at a doorway hanging crooked on half-shorn hinges. Cap nudged her through. The bank’s grand lobby had been gutted. Plaster dust drifted in slow sheets through the pulse of the orange alarm light. Cracks…
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Chapter 6: Hello The explosion reached her as sound and then as force. A concussive boom tore through the tunnel, shaking loose grit that rained into Apricot’s hair. The lights spasmed twice and died. Darkness swallowed everything except thin ribbons…
