Synopsis

ECHO'S MOUNTAIN: Raised among a brutal range of snow-bound mountains, Echo has every reason to believe she is the last un-Afflicted human in existence. However, all that changes in the grip of a blizzard when she encounters Arianna, a surprisingly lucid Rabid girl fleeing from a quarantined town on the flatlands below. At first, Echo is wary, taught to fear and avoid the Rabid lest they infect her, but Arianna is lost and alone, helpless against the cold. Rather than leave Arianna to die, Echo risks everything for a chance at human connection, perhaps even love. Unfortunately, after just a few days together, Arianna’s presence proves to be part of an elaborate trap—a desperate attempt to fulfill a misguided Rabid prophecy—and Echo must draw on Rabid mythology, her own personal history, and the world-ending power of a semi-sentient entity known as the Fugue, in order to save herself and Arianna from a violent fate.

ZEPHYR'S RAFT: Hiding on the post-apocalyptic fringes, Zephyr scrapes out a quiet, nomadic existence as a salvager, diving to recover Builder relics, then trading them in un-Afflicted seaside villages. Saved by the Fugue and raised from infancy to be its host, Zephyr is capable of resisting less-friendly, less-sentient, parasitical strains, but past traumas plague his nightmares as he questions the nature of his identity. When a fearsome warlord, Torrid, attacks a town Zephyr is visiting, Zephyr’s instinct is to flee before he’s recognized as anything other than human. However, by staying to save a young cabin boy, Fin, Zephyr becomes entangled in a web of ambitions and conflicts. Zephyr, Fin, and Fin’s guardian, Rane, are captured by Torrid’s forces and dragged to his desert base. There, Zephyr must overcome his personal insecurities, face off against monsters spun from collective memory, and reveal his hybrid nature to Rane in order to defeat the warlord and his less symbiotic, less self-aware parasitical strain known as the Horde.

ANANKE'S GARDEN: Serving aboard a salvaged Builder starship, Ananke and Ananke’s five crewmates travel across the universe seeking the Builders who fled Earth during the initial, world-ending plague. Approaching a nebula, they receive a distress signal which leads them to a strange moon, and to Char, a Builder-descended soldier attempting to harvest a powerful plasmatic fuel. Rescuing Char makes for a positive first re-contact with his people, but life aboard the battered Builder ark station is anything but utopian. Arriving to a charged political situation on the cusp of a core-dweller rebellion, Ananke attempts to conceal zer nature as a fully-independent, embodiment of the Fugue. When a riot escalates into war, Ananke must risk everything to save zer crew, the ark’s citizens, and humanity as a whole, all while falling in love with Char and confronting the next stage of zer own evolution.