The Edge Of Never Novels & Stories

Tastemiles The girl crawled on fours behind the budding tomato shrubs in the thicket. The man scanned the driveway with his eyes. The thicket too. seconds later, the door slammed behind him. Heavy footsteps echoed in his wake as he made his way down the wooden steps. She creeped further into the thicket, careful not to rustle the leaves hanging from the low branches of the shrub. He marched down the driveway and past the picket gate. The girl creeped out and stood brushing the dried leaves and grime off her cloth. Her face contorted in confusion.

"Guess never.” “This wolf is very rare, and fortunately, it chose our prince. It is full white like snow and has an enormous power that could destroy planets. Isn’t that exciting??” “Emm…” She pulled Noelle into the middle of the dance floor as the music blared. Lights flashed and a smoke filled the area with weird-smelling fog. They twirled and laughed as some friends and a few of the other kids joined them. The music cut out suddenly and the lights turned on mid song.

Engrossed in my thoughts about how pretty it would look on my finger, I didn't notice two strangers slowly creeping up behind me. Once I turned the corner, a shadowy figure burst forward and snatched the bag out of my hands. As I instinctively tried to go after him, I saw a glint from the corner of my eye and heard the rustling in the air. The blade just barely slashed the side of my abdomen, drawing a bit of blood. I stumbled to the ground. A ruthless voice murmured beside me, "Boss said that you're getting in the way." My head started spinning, and my vision turned a little hazy.

“It’s not all bad!” I put my foot on her face, forcing her to face the view--- and laughed when I heard her terrified, muffled cries. We were at the edge of our territory, a huge cliff that we rarely patrolled because it was hard to access – and too close to a known rogue area. And while the view was lovely, the cliff’s edge was a sharp drop that plunged into a gorge so deep, it seemed to swallow light. The hill down looked like a jagged scar carved into the mountainside, sharp with the scent of stone and old, cold earth.

He stirred the fire until it burned hotter, more light pushing back the dark. “What is it?” he asked, only when her breathing had evened out. “We have stories,” she said. “About things that live between. Not here. Not… wherever here isn’t. Tall. Fair. Beautiful. Terrible. They like crossroads, Edges. People who don’t quite belong to one world or another.” “Ashford lodge in the woods with a Beacon inside it probably counts as an edge,” he said. “Yes,” she said. “We call them different things in different tongues. Tamawo. Other names. It doesn’t matter which one it is. They all like to bargain.”

“You have a foot in and a foot out at the same time.” I shook my head. “That doesn’t make any sense.” She turned and gestured down the hallway. “Come.” I followed her outside, my legs heavy now. The pack grounds stretched out before us exactly as I remembered them… until I saw the far edge that led to one of the exists It was black. Not darkness like that of night, this was something else. This felt like nothingness. My breath caught. “What is that?” She didn’t look away. “The end.”

Time thinks in edges. Edges are where erosion happens. Edges are where hunger feeds. Edges are where motion becomes consumption. So I step away from the edge. Not physically. Geometrically. The pressure has been increasing again, not in new ways, but in repetitions. The same misplacements. The same flickers. The same almost distortions. The circle tightening, revisiting, testing for cracks. Flat circle. It wants me to move around it. So I stop imagining forward. I stop imagining future.

“You don’t owe her anything.” “I know,” I answered, though the words tasted hollow. By noon, reports filtered in from the city. A transaction intercepted. A deal resolved with surgical efficiency. No casualties. No signatures. Just results. “Who handled it?” I asked. “No one we know,” Matteo said. “But the method’s familiar.” I looked up sharply. “Define familiar.” “Timing. Leverage. Pressure points. It’s… disciplined.” I said nothing. That evening, another property flagged red—not burned, but emptied, scrubbed down to bare walls. A place only Victoria and three others had ever known.

Again and again, he shattered every boundary I had left. “You’d better let me go now. If Caleb can’t find me, he’ll–” “He’ll what?” Matteo exploded in rage. “You think I’m afraid of Caleb? Let me tell you something. All men are the same. A man can treat you well today and turn around and love another woman tomorrow.” Realizing there was no point arguing with him, I shut my mouth. Eventually, Matteo calmed down too. Several unfamiliar people moved in and out of the villa. I had never seen any of them before.

I stopped at the distance she had specified, and I did not go further. The eastern border was visible from here, the tree line thinning at the territory’s edge, the specific quality of the boundary between Sovereign North and what lay beyond it, the place where my land’s awareness ended and something older and less familiar began. I could see the shapes of them at that boundary, Sable and the Architect, the morning light falling across both of them with the specific impartiality of light that did not understand or care what it was illuminating.