Bliss in The Abyss
In the far future, anchored in the Atlantic Ocean, the city of Magna Hortus rises like a monument to human ambition-its vast walls towering above the sea, its foundations sinking into an abyss without end. Within its layered expanse, millions of lives unfold in fragile equilibrium, bound together by innovation, myth, and the quiet assumption that the boundary between life and death is absolute.
It is not.
Across the city, something has begun to slip.
The dead are no longer content to remain distant. Whispers bleed into waking life. Memories distort. Systems falter under the weight of things that should not exist. As the unseen presses closer, an older question resurfaces with violent urgency: what does it truly mean to be alive-and who has the right to claim it?
That question fractures the world.
Radical movements rise, some seeking to grant personhood to artificial minds, others determined to deny it at any cost. Ancient forces stir beneath the surface, their motives obscured but their influence undeniable. And beyond it all, distant observers turn their attention toward Magna Hortus-waiting for proof that humanity is either worthy of survival... or ripe for extinction.
Caught within this convergence are lives that should never have intersected: a man bound to the will of the spirits he cannot escape, a returning matriarch whose legend has outgrown her humanity, and a ruler of flesh and science who has long since abandoned the limits of both.
Each carries a different answer to the same impossible question.
And as the city begins to fracture under the weight of those answers, one truth becomes increasingly difficult to ignore:
The line between the living and the dead was never meant to hold.