The earliest memory he could hold En-capsule was binding scraps into breathing limbs for Riggers on Skaars Round near Mars.
First folds and remnants of the past were more akin to jilted frames in dark hallways far too close. When those early memories tried to quicken, he impelled them back to their forsaken corridors.
They said he had Paragon Bones. That was the old world and the old way — it meant you didn’t fix things, you made them kneel.
He didn’t care about stories or names. He cared about survival. And survival was a trade you made one scar at a time. Like the Riggers on Skaars Round; they were respected and battle-worn; riding in on ships stitched together from scraps, sealing away the weakest points behind aged armor. They offered anything for a price; samite water and memory shards — all for a price.
He had traded his left eye, flesh-of-flesh, for a learning node. A bad trade some might have said.
The node taught him how things fit together that shouldn’t. Bone and wire. Flesh and coil. Things only the Riggers were supposed to know.
When the first “Paragon Cycles” rolled out, beasts half-machine, he found an early one in a Trader camp fostered by the Mortunruk Citadel. The camp was off-site, on a rock near Skaars Round — away from prying eyes.
It ran smooth.
Real smooth.
It was small enough to hide beneath a chest plate in his armor. It did what he wanted. After a time, it could do what he thought. And it made him a better soldier. Feared for accuracy and brutal to fatal.
They tell stories now.
They say he patrols all 42 Rounds, far beyond Skaars, with a pack of Chew Units — stitched-together speech engines, broken voice boxes clicking out prayers in binary chokes and whispers.
They say he’s looking for someone — maybe himself, maybe worse.
Doesn’t matter.
You hear a rumble, you see the sand start to dance — you pray you’re not on the list.
Once he names you, there’s no unmaking the machine that comes next.
Only parts.
Only pieces.
Only jilted frames remain.
Abraham arrays the cosmos, creating a foggy and dreamlike atmosphere where anything is possible. If existential science fiction is to your taste, you’ll find the writing itself almost hauntingly poetic with hair-raising frenzy. With a passion for crafting mind-bending tales that linger long after the last page, Abraham crafts speculative fiction that doesn’t just entertain—it disturbs.
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