Life in the slums of Terraxia is just as you might expect. It’s dank. It smells. And it’s populated with the usual assortment of cretins, low-lifes and, opportunitsts just trying to make a quick mark. Uriah, a bright eyed boy of ten, strolled down his favorite alley. It may have looked like all the other alleys that populated this part of the city, but this one had a book shop nestled in a dark co...

I flipped through the pages enthuastically, that unknown animals weren’t like humans, but they were so interesting, so different. I loved reading each and everyone of the descriptions of each animal, but one particularly catches my eye. The picture showed sobering similar to a tiny dog, but the ears were shorter and pointier, the snout was a shorter as well, and the tail was long and skinny. I rea...

In the corrugated shadows of a ruined metropolis where nature’s voice had long been silenced, Julian wandered in search of remnants from a world now vanished. In this dystopian future, non-human animals had been erased from the annals of life—a casualty of mankind’s relentless ambition and technological conquest. Yet, amid the desolation, faint whispers of a bygone era still clung to the crumbling...

Elara had always loved old books. The way their pages smelled of time and ink, the way their covers told stories even before she opened them. So when she found an ancient, leather-bound book in the dusty corner of a secondhand shop, she knew she had to take it home.

That night, curled up in bed, she flipped through its pages. It was filled with illustrations of cats—sleek black ones, round-faced ...

It was not known how humans had once communicated with cats.

According to AI-generated cat models, they were unpredictable—wild. They could attack their owners at any moment. Every AI simulation failed to make them completely safe.

She closed her eyes, imagining what it would feel like to touch such an animal. A strange sensation washed over her. No. She couldn’t. There was a reason all animal...

“Hmmm.” Xion said aloud to himself. He had pulled one of his grandmother’s history books from the shelf and was looking through it. The book felt both sturdy and fragile in his hands. It was big, thick, but its binding was coming loose and the pages were yellowing from age. Nana had said these books had belonged to her grandmother.l, and may have been even older.

Flipping absentmindedly through ...

The Lexicon was the physical storehouse for all knowledge across the united worlds of The Collective. A massive mausoleum of information and books from before The Unification. Of course, anything the average citizen wanted to know was available through the Interlink with a simple request their AI for information. In fact, all information nowadays was ferried through machines and computers with lit...

In a world cloaked in perpetual twilight, the hum of machinery was the only companion to silence. The air hung thick with the scent of oil and decay, and the skies were veiled by an impenetrable layer of ash. This was a place where nature had become a whisper, a forgotten echo swallowed by the relentless march of industry. And in this desolate world, Aldric found solace in the abandoned library.

...

The library was vast and held extensive knowledge. Extensive power. The secrets beyond these pages had been held in place for millennia, no souls had glanced upon the ancient texts this forest of paper retained. One book, one lonely book, on a shelf in a room, alone. Seemed to speak to me, I could feel the cry of it’s existence ringing true in my ears. Then was the books that many have searched th...

Art is a staple in my family. Each afternoon, I walk past a portrait of my mother painted by my father on their one year wedding anniversary. Her legs fold elegantly behind her as she sits in a field of flowers. Every bloom and blade of grass turns to her, as if she is the sun. The painting is kept pressed into a large frame and hung on the east wall of the enterance. This was so my father could s...