There is no night in the Everburning City. There can never be. ***** For four hundred years the Everburning City has withstood the advance of the life-strangling fog known as the Gloam. Its walls have held back five invasions, but on the eve of the sixth, the city's inhabitants know things have changed. Golems are coming out of the mist, and the bodies of the dead are rising at the Gloam's bidding. The city's last and most desperate line of defence comes in the form of the Crafters, individuals who can channel the power of fire, though they risk their sanity each time they do. The brightest of these valiant heroes are Tabitha a'Loria and her apprentice Gerald Reath. Risking their lives, they mount their airships, determined to save the last bastion of humanity - the Everburning City. [[word count: 100,000-150,000 words]]

Corporal Dia Zephyr assumed it was just another drill, no more than a Navy tradition, a rite of passage for the recruits. She expected a spacewalk, maybe a shooting game inside an asteroid field, skimming along the Collective's border before turning back to the Empire's space. After all, this was what they knew, what everyone expected. But that's not what happened. Highest ranks: [27 in #Science Fiction - 25 in #Horror 10-01-2018]