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- Herausgeber: Twist & Tether Press
- Kategorie: Abenteuer, Thriller, Horror
- Sprache: Englisch
Maris Hale has spent over two hundred days alone aboard Threnody-9, a derelict station orbiting a gas giant at the edge of known space. Her mission: stabilize failing systems, maintain life support, and endure the silence. But the station is no longer quiet.
When tools shift in the dark and a child’s lullaby echoes through the vents, Maris begins to question what remains of her mind. Dreams she never had, voices she never recorded, and footprints that shouldn’t exist pull her into a slow unraveling.
The deeper she searches the station’s forgotten corridors, the more impossible details surface—crew logs that name her dead brother, sealed doors that respond to her voice, and memories she cannot trust.
As reality fractures and the station seems to breathe with its own intent, Maris must face the truth she buried long ago—before Threnody seals her in for good.
What happens when the only way out… is through a past that never left?
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Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2025
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Where the Walls Breathe
This Station Never Lets You Leave Alone.
When the Stars Lied
Margot Elise Winters
Copyright © 2025 by Margot Elise Winters
All rights reserved. This book, including all individual stories and original content, is protected under international copyright law. No part of this publication may be copied, reproduced, distributed, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means—electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise—without prior written permission from the author, except for brief excerpts used in reviews or academic commentary, which must be properly credited.
Fiction Disclaimer:
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons—living or dead—is entirely coincidental.
Cover Image Notice:
The cover artwork for this book was created using licensed generative AI tools under commercial-use terms. It is an original, symbolic composition created specifically for this title. Any characters depicted are fictional and do not represent real individuals.
AI Tools Acknowledgement:
The cover image and/or illustrations were created using generative AI technology under appropriate commercial-use licensing. All visual elements are original compositions intended solely for this publication.
Thank you for reading this special collection. I hope you enjoy every story inside.
Table of Contents
Where the Walls Breathe
Description
Chapter 1: Static in the Veins
Chapter 2: The Memory That Wasn’t
Chapter 3: Corridors of Breath
Chapter 4: The False Signal
Chapter 5: Undoing the Locks
Chapter 6: Half of Her
Chapter 7: The Other Breathing
Epilogue: Echoes in the Ducts
Where the Walls Breathe
Description
Maris Hale has spent over two hundred days alone aboard Threnody-9, a derelict station orbiting a gas giant at the edge of known space. Her mission: stabilize failing systems, maintain life support, and endure the silence. But the station is no longer quiet.
When tools shift in the dark and a child’s lullaby echoes through the vents, Maris begins to question what remains of her mind. Dreams she never had, voices she never recorded, and footprints that shouldn’t exist pull her into a slow unraveling.
The deeper she searches the station’s forgotten corridors, the more impossible details surface—crew logs that name her dead brother, sealed doors that respond to her voice, and memories she cannot trust.
As reality fractures and the station seems to breathe with its own intent, Maris must face the truth she buried long ago—before Threnody seals her in for good.
What happens when the only way out… is through a past that never left?
Chapter 1: Static in the Veins
The station hummed like a sleeping animal—low, breathy, constant. Not mechanical, not truly. Something deeper. Resonant.
I sat cross-legged on the grated floor beside the central oxygen relay, a thin layer of frost blooming on the conduit just inches from my thigh. Diagnostics blinked green across the console’s surface, but I already knew something was off. The air felt thicker this morning. Heavier. As if each breath needed convincing.
I wiped the sweat from my upper lip and tapped the side of the tablet. “CO₂ readings are rising again,” I murmured aloud, logging the voice entry. “No leak detected. No subsystem error. Manual override stable.”
The words sounded professional, even calm. But my voice had a tremor on the playback. I heard it clearly when I reviewed the log later, like the echo of someone who’d just woken from a nightmare and couldn’t quite place why her hands were shaking.
Threnody-9 had been mine alone for—
I paused, squinting at the corner of the panel where someone had etched a tic mark with a stylus. There were over two hundred of them now, etched diagonally on the underside of the relay cover. My own crude calendar.
Day two hundred twenty-seven.
The number settled somewhere behind my ribs like sediment.
A small, circular vent near the ceiling hissed as the atmosphere recyclers kicked in. I watched frost form on the edge of the metal. One of the fans made a low whining sound, not sharp enough to trigger an alert, but off-key.
It reminded me of something from childhood.
The way wind whistled through the cracked window at the lake house.
I closed my eyes and let the sound carry me for a moment, trying to remember the shape of the room, the scent of damp towels and citrus soap. My little brother had carved a name into the wooden window frame with a plastic knife—KEIR, in backward letters.
“So it looks right from outside,” he said. “If someone’s watching.”
I opened my eyes.
The air here had no scent. Filtered, sterile, a whisper of something ancient trapped in aluminum and recycled carbon. No citrus. No lake breeze.
The wrench beside me was warm from my hand. I turned it over once, then placed it precisely on the folded cloth mat beside the console.
Tools had their places. Order kept the rot from spreading.
The station hummed again.
***
I returned to the central module with the data drive tucked inside my jacket, one hand wrapped loosely around the looped strap of my tool belt. The hallway lights flickered in rhythm—one-two, pause, then again. A glitch in the motion sensors. I’d repaired them last week.
The corridor split before me, east toward the reactor coils and west toward my sleeping quarters. I hesitated. My boots were already scuffed with frost. The floor vibrated faintly beneath my soles.
I looked east. Then west.
West.
The observation deck was two levels above my quarters, but I rarely went up there anymore. Not since the incident with the external arm. Not since the dream.
But something about the weight of the air today made me turn toward the lift.
Inside the lift capsule, I adjusted the collar of my undersuit and tapped the side wall with the back of my hand. It responded sluggishly.
The walls here felt… soft. Not physically, but energetically. Yielding. Like the station had begun to listen.
I pressed my forehead to the cool paneling and whispered, “Deck Seven.”
The lift began its ascent.
***
The observation deck was empty, of course. Dust gathered in the corners despite the pressurized environment. I stepped through the threshold and was hit with the sudden presence of scale—space stretched out beyond the wide glass arc in velvet black, pierced by cold stars.
The gas giant hung below, painted in molten hues. Bands of storm clouds coiled endlessly around its surface, slow as time.
I sat on the bench at the far end, beside the emergency console no one had touched in months. My hand drifted over the small brass coin taped to the edge—an old Earth quarter with a hole drilled through the center.
Keir’s quarter.
I’d found it in my locker the first month I arrived, though I hadn’t packed it.
I stared at it now, trying to remember the exact day he drowned.
I had been thirteen. He was eleven.
We weren’t supposed to be near the lake without the adults. He ran out across the dock, arms wide like wings, and leapt. I’d followed more slowly, still clutching the box of fruit snacks from the kitchen. I’d looked away for a second.
And when I looked back—
The water was flat. Still. Too still.
The memory flickered like faulty footage, too clean. Too clinical. I remembered diving in. The feel of weeds against my legs. The way my lungs burned.
But not his face.
Never his face.
“Why can’t I see you?” I whispered.
The silence pressed closer.
Behind me, the deck’s ventilation grille clicked once, then again.
Not a normal sound. Not from that section.
I turned.
Nothing.
But something had shifted.
