A storm darkened the dawn. Four horse-drawn carriages climbed a wide dirt path. On their right was the forested hillside of a mountain and to their left, the city of Vultheras, its inlet of turbulent water shrouded in fog. Anton Eddleston couldn’t appreciate the view. He still had fair-colored skin and the golden-blonde hair of his mother, but the …

  I was closest to my sister Jessica, my twin in a family of ten. Before the age of twelve we were inseparable, tutored together, educated in the customs of nobility and the art of spellcraft. I think our closeness was due to my own weakness. I wasn’t the youngest sibling, but I had the least potential for magic. As …

  The Ark was an enormous starship, five miles long and a half-mile across. It possessed eight ion engines, each as large as a city block. Its hull, layered with radiation-absorbents, was protected by an energized carapace which deflected space debris large and small. There were four stasis carriages fixed to the exterior that rotated to support their own gravity. …

  My pod juddered. A robotic arm carried it from the wall of the stasis carriage to the ladder transit that crossed the center of the once-revolving tube. The radiation sheath split and slid away. My glass canopy cracked open. High-oxygen gel burst from my pressurized nutrient bath. I awoke, for the first time, coughed on gel and gasped for …

  Ghost opened his white eyes. He was sitting on a wood stool in the sun, atop the deck of the demon empire’s last warship: The Emperor of the Sea. It possessed advanced technology and an enormous length of more than 150 feet. Ostensibly it was meant to be the demon emperor’s personal flagship and was gilded with wood carvings …

  In the beginning there was nothing, and then I was created. My understanding is that I was an experiment, one-part flesh and metal, so that humankind could comprehend the functions of the Quantum System, a bio-computer that they called: Lore. Their tools were as simple as scalpels and tweezers, and their methods were crude. If it were by their …

  She was five feet tall and of slight build, but she hefted the eight-foot long broadsword over her shoulders like it were an extension of her own self. Her short, raven black hair fell neatly on either side of her face, and her dark-brown eyes glistened in the pale light of the stars. Her black-leather armor, the Raiment of …

  I thought that the last of us, we few survivors of humankind, shouldn’t forget what was sacrificed: The alliance—a bond forged in desperation—that saved the human race. What came from beyond appeared unstoppable, with science so far beyond our own it was like magic, but we were clever and tenacious. Although billions were lost and Earth’s biosphere was destroyed, …

The demon emperor stared through the light surge that was the temporary configuration spire. The surface of the flow rippled like a rushing river, as if he could alter the stream with the pass of his hand. The mana within exceeded everything he imagined, inconceivable to his penultimate eyes. “If I could harness that power, I could break the script …

  They said I was cursed, that didn’t make a sound the night I was born. The nurses thought I was stillborn, but as I emerged, they saw the truth. Even my mother wouldn’t swaddle me. My eyes weren’t those of a baby, but the narrow, diamond pupils of a beast. They glowed throughout the night and into the day, …