Fantasy
Yellow Lights, Lucky Breaks & Borders
Crossing the Alameda border, I reached up and knocked twice on the car ceiling with my curled index and middle fingers. “Why do you do that?” Cynthia twirled a section of her long, coppery tresses; it was a fidget that I had long grown to love. She was perfect—literally everything that I had asked for. A redhead who looked like she had it all together and was a little crazy in the best way: great with fixing cars, loved dogs, and had a huge heart. She was amazing, and once again I looked at her and felt like the luckiest man alive.
By Alicia Anspaugh19 days ago in Fiction
The Skyforge Chronicles
In the village of Larkspire, where the rooftops were stitched with copper and the cobblestone streets hummed with ancient magic, young Elian lived a life far quieter than he wished. Most boys his age chased sparrows or kicked stones into the river, but Elian chased the sky. He’d climb the tallest hills, stretching his arms toward the clouds, imagining he could pluck a star and bring it down like a fallen leaf.
By Imran Pisani19 days ago in Fiction
A Sky Remembered
The sky was breaking. Not gently. Not beautifully. It tore itself open like a wound that refused to stay closed, blue clashing violently with flame as clouds spiraled into a burning ring above Cindervale. The air shook with every pulse of heat, and people fled the streets, screaming, praying, clinging to doorways as stone cracked beneath their feet.
By Imran Pisani19 days ago in Fiction
The Fire That Refused to Burn
Kael did not wake to light. He woke to silence so complete it rang in his ears. For a long moment, he couldn’t feel his body. No pain, no warmth, no fire. Just emptiness, like the space left behind after something essential had been torn out. Panic rose in his chest, sharp and sudden.
By Imran Pisani19 days ago in Fiction
The Fall of Cindervale
The rain did not bring peace. At first, people stood stunned beneath the open sky, letting water soak through ash-stained clothes and cracked stone. Some laughed. Some cried. Some simply stared upward, afraid the blue would vanish if they blinked.
By Imran Pisani19 days ago in Fiction
Fire That Chooses
The lower city did not celebrate the Pyre Lord’s fall. It braced. Kael felt the tension everywhere he walked—through the terraces, across the bridges, along the glowing channels of water that cut through the stone. The city that remembered rain had survived by hiding, not by hoping. And hope, now, burned brighter than the Heartwell itself.
By Imran Pisani19 days ago in Fiction
The Pyre Lord’s Crown
The Pyre Lord felt the shift long before the bells rang. He stood alone at the highest balcony of the Obsidian Spire, where the Ash Sky pressed so low it felt close enough to touch. Below him, Cindervale stretched outward in jagged layers of stone and soot, its people moving like ants beneath the weight of his rule. The air trembled faintly, a sensation only those bound to fire could sense.
By Imran Pisani19 days ago in Fiction
The City That Remembered Rain
Kael felt it the moment his foot crossed the threshold. The air changed—not warmer or colder, but cleaner, sharper, like it had never known ash. The spiral staircase ended in a vast chamber where roots as thick as watchtowers broke through the stone ceiling, their surfaces glowing faintly blue. Water slid down them in steady streams, gathering in channels carved into the floor.
By Imran Pisani19 days ago in Fiction
The City Beneath the Ash Sky
The sky had not been blue for as long as anyone could remember. It hung low and gray, like a ceiling built by angry gods, shedding ash instead of rain. The people of Cindervale called it the Ash Sky, and they lived their lives beneath it with bowed heads and quiet voices, as if speaking too loudly might make it fall.
By Imran Pisani19 days ago in Fiction
Ashes of the Blackwood House
The town had decided what lived inside the Blackwood House long before anyone bothered to ask. From the road below, the state looked carved out of shadow and stubbornness-iron gates rusted shut, stone walls brined with ivy like old scars. People who whispered about it the way they whispered about deaths that had never been solved properly. With reverence. With fear. With relief that it wasn’t their burden to carry.
By Blaire Haven19 days ago in Fiction
from death into life. Top Story - February 2026.
Young Aldin of Wiloh had never contemplated death. It was almost strange — so many around him had the tendency to obsess over it, to clamor and claw almost desperately at their own perceptions of the end to know death as much as they could: when it would come, why it would come, where it would take them when it did.
By angela hepworth20 days ago in Fiction
