A Nascent Kaleidoscope. Novels & Stories

“...continues to test the patrol line, especially along the southern routes.” The words float past me like smoke, insubstantial and elusive. My gaze has wandered again, fixing on the mosaic tiles to my left where indigo shapes twist and spiral like ancient script—beautiful, meaningless, hypnotic. Each piece of colored glass catches the light differently, creating a kaleidoscope that shifts with every slight movement of my head.

Greyson looks surprised, but smirks and nods, “It’s fine. I’m surprised that you didn’t shout more, never mind staying as still as you did. But I’m grateful that you did.” He picks up the cylinder and studies it more closely. She could see now that it was very similar to the sphere, with the three layers of metal filigree floating gently within themselves with a black crystal also floating in the centre, but it was a long thin crystal instead. “This is some fucked up shit. I can destroy it for you, if you want…” Celine nods, “Please do.” Greyson holds his hands out to them and the crystals gradually change colour to clear as dark smoke drifts off them and vanishes in the air. A few moments l

Click. The noise was getting closer. The air started to bend and shimmer over Selene's unconscious body. The space twisted like the heat haze on a summer road, and for a second that made my heart stop, I could see *through*. Not to another room, but to a place with shapes that don't follow the rules of Euclidean geometry and change shape. A place with sharp, black rocks and a sky that looked like a new bruise. A tall, thin figure was standing in that landscape, slowly turning its head.

Unity in Chaos Iris (startled awake): "Where am I? This isn't genuine, please. She was in a beautiful silver radiance, standing in a limitless emptiness. Caleb appeared beside her, confused, but soon snapped out of it. (Gesturing around) "Iris? What is this? One of your tricks?" Iris: "I don't know," she said harshly. It might be one of yours. An almost mystical resonance filled the room as a musical voice reverberated.

Just quiet inside. Just ready. Callum’s hand slipped into mine again, natural now, like breath. His presence beside me wasn’t a shield or an anchor—it was part of the foundation. We moved forward together into a chamber shaped like a spiral. Crystalline threads laced the ceiling like constellations, glowing faintly, forming new patterns the longer we stared. And in the center, hovering just above a pedestal of light, was a seed. Not a metaphor. A literal seed, silver-veined and pulsing with life, contained in a transparent orb.

POV EMMA BELLE The sky was no longer blue, nor was it the harvest-gold of Aethelred’s autumn. It was a flickering, terrifying mosaic of Non-Euclidean Polygons. The Origin-World—the First King’s cold, geometric home—was no longer approaching; it was Overwriting.

Calyx followed without comment, his footsteps steady behind mine. Shelves rose on either side—lined with glass jars, burlap sacks, and old wooden crates. I reached for a half-empty jar of rice, then a bundle of dried rosemary brittle with age. My hands moved automatically, but my mind stayed somewhere else. Somewhere lower. Deeper. Nyelith, with her fingers curved around her stomach. Her silence. Her choice. Calyx said nothing, even as I loaded items into the crate. I could feel him watching me—assessing, not intruding. Letting me build something with my hands while my heart sifted through ash.

Once, twice, and on the third blow, the door groaned inward, revealing a yawning darkness that smelled of dust, cold stone, and decades of neglect. I clicked on a high-powered flashlight, the beam cutting a swath through the black. The interior was a single, vast, circular space. The skeleton of a massive, dismantled telescope dominated the center, its metal bones reaching up into the domed ceiling. But my light did not linger on the astronomical debris. It swept the walls. And there, almost invisible behind a curtain of rusted machinery and fallen cables, was a door. Not of rusted steel, but of polished, modern titanium, seamless and electronic. A stark anachronism in the decay.

Cade woke to silence, but it wasn’t the kind of silence that comforts. It pressed against his eardrums, filling his skull, making each heartbeat sound like a gunshot. His eyes snapped open, and everything shifted. The water was gone. Instead, he stood on a bridge of mirrors stretching into an impossibly dark horizon. Below him, a city glimmered, buildings bending at angles that shouldn’t exist, streets folding into one another like origami. Above, the sky wasn’t sky—it was a ceiling of fractured reflections, catching him from every possible angle.