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In the Echomaw, a cave with no echo, Teeg talks to a dying candle, remembering the warnings he ignored, the friends he lost, and the boundary he was never meant to cross.
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On the night before the coup, Hagen Vada walks upward through Streindarke’s wards, judging the city that excluded him. At dawn on the upper terrace, he raises his hand and gives the signal.
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A boy called Scrat tends the household spirit his family has always kept. When a travelling wizard arrives to break the old arrangement, the house and its protector answer in ways no sorcery can match.
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A nurse returns from wartime France to bury her father in a Shropshire village, where a children’s singing game on the green carries instructions she has been following all her life.
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A crow called Voscur terrorises the hedgerow, tearing apart nests and carrying off chicks. A small sparrow named Sasper watches, learns the crow’s habits, and begins a patient campaign of revenge.
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King Richard III sends Richard Taillour west to investigate a seized merchant vessel and the disappearance of two royal commissioners. What he finds aboard the Sint Marie in Axmouth harbour defies all record.
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Rhett Bormis flees through Streindarke’s forgotten transit tunnels after refusing to hide the truth of Charlotte’s death. A stranger named Dove pulls him into the dark.
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A stranded traveller takes shelter at an inn and hears the innkeeper’s dark tale of a murdered duke, a vast and unknowable cook, and a feast that no guest could forget. Based on the #vss365 prompt #divine
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Five children play a counting game on Bodmin Moor above Minions. When the rhyme turns cruel and one of them dies, the survivors bury what happened. Twenty years later, those old words return.
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Chosen, blessed, sky-called. The village sings Pegwyche’s name as she rises toward the floating Rookery of Ninelast. But going-up is not a marriage. Mister Talp, the blind mole groundskeeper, knows what it really is.