Story
A captain takes a contract, and a small ship leaves everything familiar behind. Somewhere along its route, a settlement is living by rules the crew has never encountered. Another vessel lies silent with something still running inside. At the next port, a stranger may be looking for passage—or offering a reason to change direction entirely.
Sometimes you take a job because it is the only one available. You may never learn to love it, but leaving is something you cannot afford. Across Krakon, some people take the opportunity within reach. Others have no say in where they find themselves.
Above an unfamiliar planet, the crew waits for the captain to finish the calculations. Will there be a landing? Who will go?
Some hope never to hear their names. Others have spent so long inside the ship that almost any patch of solid ground would feel like a gift, provided the reports look safe enough. A few are eager even when they do not. There are crew members kept in storage specifically for dangerous assignments, ready to be awakened when those moments come.
But sometimes the captain's calculations favor someone else.
The descent may begin inside a cramped capsule, with barely enough room to bend your knees. Returning will require another decision, another expense, and someone above who still considers the journey worthwhile. Surviving the landing does not guarantee a place on the ship again.
You might even be left free—on a world where nobody would choose to spend that freedom.
Elsewhere, someone has a comfortable life aboard a station: a small business, familiar neighbors, and a lover with whom life fits together like the two halves of a seed. There are obligations, but also pleasures, plans, and reasons to be content.
Still, a rumor about somewhere far away refuses to leave them alone. They call it an opportunity to make their fortune. Perhaps that is part of the truth.
One half of the seed leaves for the unknown. The other waits, like a flower losing its petals.
On another world, a hero gives his life to protect his people—and discovers that he has done so before. A poem written for his beloved in his first life survives to reveal what he cannot remember.
Who stole my eternity
to give me another life to bleed through?
How many stars have they bought
with the stories of my sacrifice?
He believed the monsters were invading his home. Now he has reason to believe that neither he nor the monsters belonged there.
When he resists, the people he once defended are sent to destroy him.
Every song begins with a story.
