thanh.nguyenhoang.1403@gmail.com
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11 d, 4 h
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The airlock of the cathedral-ship is a cold, sterile vacuum-lock of grey metal, completely devoid of the pulsing obsidian and starlight veins of the inner chambers. I stand before the heavy pressure door of Escape Pod 4. Behind me, two Eidon sentries stand at absolute attention, their plasma-pikes deactivated but humming with residual heat. Threat Imminent. The Crown’s scream is still echoing in my skull. When the military software had weaponized my panic and arousal into a red alert, Vorek had moved…-
22.3 K • Completed
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"Whose memories are living inside your head?" The question hangs in the heavy, ozone-scented air of the resonance chamber. Commander Kael Veyr’s three voices vibrate through the pearl-translucent walls, sinking directly into the marrow of my bones. I press my spine harder against the shifting biological bulkhead, trying to put distance between myself and the towering eight-foot mass of the Eidon warlord. The silver Crown clamped around my skull hums a low, erratic warning. "I am…
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22.3 K • Completed
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The green holographic ghost of a woman who wore my face flickers and dies, swallowed back into the obsidian floor of the resonance chamber. The silence that follows is absolute. It is a heavy, suffocating vacuum. And then, a sharp, high-pitched whine pierces the quiet. It doesn't come from the Crown. It comes from the ship’s biological bulkheads. The dim, ambient hum of the long-range communication relays—the steady, rhythmic vibration connecting the Eidon flagship to Earth Command—suddenly…
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22.3 K • Completed
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The glowing green numbers of the Aegis-7 firing sequence reflect in the solid obsidian of Kael’s eyes. The soft, twilight gold that had flooded the walls of the resonance chamber just moments ago—the ship’s biological acknowledgment of our mating, our absolute surrender—dies instantly. It is sucked back into the living bulkheads like blood retreating from a frozen limb. In its place, a sickly, strobing yellow takes over. The color of biological dissonance. The color of a trap springing…
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22.3 K • Completed
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The cathedral-ship screams. It is not a mechanical siren. It is a biological howl of pure, structural agony tearing through the pearl-translucent walls of the resonance chamber. The obsidian deck violently bucks beneath my knees. The first Earth Command targeting lasers are painting the flagship’s hull, invisible from the inside, but the living vessel feels the crosshairs. The ambient starlight pulsing in the ship’s veins turns a diseased, necrotic yellow. I am kneeling on the glass, the cold biting…
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22.3 K • Completed
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The concussive boom of Earth Command’s orbital artillery detonates against the outer hull, a sound so immense it bypasses my eardrums and shatters directly against my bones. The ceiling arches of the resonance chamber cave inward. A rain of jagged, obsidian-glass debris plummets toward us. I do not even have time to flinch. Kael’s massive body eclipses the light. He throws himself over me, driving me flush against the biological deck. His four arms lock together, forming an impenetrable, armored cage…
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22.3 K • Completed
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Varka The border square is a scar of white marble and red clay, a neutral plaza where the shadow of the Gargoyle spires meets the open sewers of the Orc slums. Today, it smells of ozone, wet iron, and impending execution. Behind my shield-wall of scarred Orc veterans, the forty-three hybrid refugees I dragged from the collapsing catacombs are huddling like branded cattle. Their skin is a patchwork of slate-grey and copper-red; their malformed wings twitch beneath heavy wool shawls, and their stunted…-
21.3 K • Completed
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Varka The transition from sovereign to fugitive is measured in the span of three heartbeats and the scrape of iron on stone. "Form the line!" my vanguard commander, his split ear twitching with treasonous intent, does not look at me. He looks through me. The grey, deadened keloids on my forearms no longer pulse with the community’s heat. To him, I am no longer the blood-anchor of the clan; I am an old female with gold-capped teeth who has traded the purity of the night for a gargoyle’s cold…
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21.3 K • Completed
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Aurex The waking is always a slow fracture. Every sunrise, the cold, grey stasis of my stone-sleep must split from the inside out. The blue-white veins of my lapis core begin to pulse, sending the first sluggish currents of liquid fire down through my shoulders, along the heavy joints of my baroque wings, and finally into the thick, clawed toes anchored to the cathedral floor. But this morning, there is no smooth transition. The stone does not slide into life; it screeches. I choke on a breath of dry…
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21.3 K • Completed
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Varka The violet light does not fade; it burns. It sears through the back of my eyelids, a blinding, physical weight that smells of ozone, old parchment, and the dry, mineral scent of crushed basalt. My orientation ears twitch, overwhelmed by a high-pitched ringing that vibrates through my skull. The heat in my blood—the ancient, pulsing Orc fire that usually guides my instincts—is screaming, but not with rage. It is screaming with the sudden, agonizing influx of thirty-six years of unfiltered,…
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21.3 K • Completed
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