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...

“I was cleaning my ancestor’s supposed house that was found, and I found a stack of papers. I rifled through. I asked my grandfather, the only family member alive who could only I knew could read, what they He told me that one paper discussed a creature called a cat that was four legged, furry, and seemingly independent. The paper was apparently a scientific report. One thing I must have missed is...

The air was stale and smelled musty. But that's what you'd expect if you had stepped into a library as old as this one.

The building itself was half collapsed. Overgrown trees and bushes hid its entrance. Some of the bricks were still fully intact, others had begun to crumble. It was a miracle Mari had stumbled across this place at all. A miracle and pure luck, she'd gathered. She wasn't allowed...

Kat flipped through the pages of the ancient book. She wasn't usually into reading, but she did like the sights and sounds of this new library down the street. Old paper and deafening silence occasionally broken by muffled footsteps or murmurs.

The book she had chosen caught her eye because of its title: "The Cat". Her name, just spelled wrong. She'd expected a dashing protagonist named Cat, exp...