Obsidian Bloom: Echoes

Richard Sinclair
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  • Science Fiction

Obsidian Bloom: Echoes is a cyberpunk-inspired anthology of short stories set in the dystopian world of Neontreal. Between the neon-lit ruins, underground sanctuaries, and decadent halls of Velvet Sanctuary, forgotten voices rise. Each tale reveals fragments of resistance, memory, and survival, from assassins bound by honor, to poets defying prophetic algorithms, to drones haunted by human echoes. Both a companion to the Obsidian Bloom trilogy and a standalone entry point, Echoes invites you to explore a fractured future where humanity refuses to disappear.

  1. 11/28/2025

    Circuits of Longing

    In the rain-soaked alleys of Neontreal’s Old Quarter, the Nyx-model surveillance drone is just another eye in the sky, silent, efficient, and obedient. Its world is made of heat signatures, encrypted directives, and reports sent back to Nexus Synergy without a second thought. Until one routine scan flags an anomaly: a starving teenage boy in a forgotten alley who looks up, reaches out, and calls the drone by name. As Nyx hovers above the boy, corrupted fragments of old code begin to surface, hinting at a role it was never meant to remember, and a promise it might once have made. Between its programmed duty to report an unregistered child and the echo of something like loyalty, a new kind of error emerges: choice. Content warning: dystopian setting; themes of child neglect, systemic violence, and AI surveillance.

  2. 11/28/2025

    Zero Shift

    Dain’s job is simple: lie down in the capsule, let the system link to his mind, and wake up already at his station, stabilizing the unpredictable currents of experimental time tech. Shift after shift, the machines hum, the graphs scroll, and his fingers move with automatic precision. No commute. No sun. No memories that reach very far beyond the lab. But a tiny glitch in his routine, a cup of coffee that never gets cold, a recording that shouldn’t exist, cracks the surface of his reality. As the Chronos Initiative and Somnus Labs blur into one endless work cycle, Dain begins to suspect that the real prison isn’t the capsule around his body, but the loop inside his mind. Content warning: psychological and existential horror; themes of overwork, loss of identity, and dehumanizing corporate systems.

  3. 11/28/2025

    Glass Cocoon

    In the lower districts of Neontreal, contract killer Selyne takes the kind of job she never refuses: double pay, no questions, one target in an abandoned hospital that officially doesn’t exist. All she has to do is find a cryogenic pod in a sealed underground wing and pull the trigger. But as she descends past dead terminals, redacted projects and cameras that should have been offline decades ago, the building starts pressing on her memory like a bruise. The deeper she goes, the more the mission feels less like a contract and more like a setup, one wired to her past, her body, and the very idea of who she is. Content warning: psychological and existential horror; medical/body horror; child endangerment themes; cloning and identity manipulation.

  4. 11/28/2025

    The Dark Horizon

    In the industrial wastelands of Neontreal, synthetic food keeps the city alive, cold, flavourless, and controlled by one corporation. But when Nohr, a low-level factory worker, discovers an anomaly in a batch of nutrition blocks, he tastes something impossible: emotion, memory… life. What begins as a malfunction soon reveals a crack in Aurion Nutraceuticals’ carefully maintained reality. Haunted by voices that are not his and pursued by shadows with too much interest in his mistake, Nohr is forced into an underworld where truth is more dangerous than hunger. As he searches for answers, he learns that some secrets are not just buried, they are trapped. And they want a way out. Content warning: psychological and existential horror; themes of memory, identity, and corporate dystopia.

  5. 11/11/2025

    Soul Mirror

    In Neontreal’s Chinatown, teenage Sayuri Kojima searches for her missing father, and finds a reflection that isn’t hers. When her brother slips into a coma and the mirrors start whispering, she dives into the city’s digital underworld to confront an entity born from human guilt itself. What stares back isn’t a ghost. It’s the truth. Content warning: psychological and existential horror.

  6. 11/01/2025

    The Patient in Ward 77

    Inside Neontreal’s Vauxhall Institute, Dr. Elian Drax hunts for the truth behind “Halcyon”, a smiling enigma who resists every attempt at reconditioning. As files corrupt and inmates start grinning for no reason, reality peels back to reveal a trap far colder than madness. Content warning: psychological horror

    The Patient in Ward 77

  7. 11/01/2025

    Phantom Beat

    In Neontreal’s Eastern Zone, Synne follows a glitching message to Echo Nexus, a nightclub that isn’t a club at all, but a temporal trap. Inside, Ezren dances the same ten minutes on repeat as reality loops, resets, and fractures. To save him, Synne must break the beat before it breaks her. Content warning: psychological tension, dissociation.

    Phantom Beat

  8. 11/01/2025

    Paws on Cold Concrete

    In the underbelly of Neontreal, a nameless stray fights for scraps among rust and neon, until he crosses paths with Mara, the healer of Haven. A story of hunger, survival, and the first flicker of belonging. Content warning: depictions of animal violence.

    Paws on Cold Concrete
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About

Obsidian Bloom: Echoes is a cyberpunk-inspired anthology of short stories set in the dystopian world of Neontreal. Between the neon-lit ruins, underground sanctuaries, and decadent halls of Velvet Sanctuary, forgotten voices rise. Each tale reveals fragments of resistance, memory, and survival, from assassins bound by honor, to poets defying prophetic algorithms, to drones haunted by human echoes. Both a companion to the Obsidian Bloom trilogy and a standalone entry point, Echoes invites you to explore a fractured future where humanity refuses to disappear.

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