For forty-three years, Silas was a nameless mechanic on a dying space station, hiding from a past he couldn't remember. He survived by becoming small—mending old pipes, turning his back on the viewport, and drowning the phantom echoes of a white room in the cheap liquor of the Rusty Valve saloon. Then, a dead data-pad clicked to life with a terrifying message: BRING SILAS. Out in the lawless dark of the Cinder Belt, a legendary experimental vessel has returned from the void. The Mercy Bell. Lost for over four decades, she has drifted back into berth at Bay Nine, her kilometer-high golden sails tattered by time, her hull weeping rivers of rust. But the entity that swallowed her crew forty-three years ago didn't destroy them. It changed them. It left behind an army of flawless, porcelain-skinned husks, their eyes wide open, permanently trapped in a state of rapt, listening awe. Now, accompanied by his fiercely loyal companion Caleb Marsh and a cold, calculating investigator hunting family ghosts, Silas must step across the threshold of his own creation. Because the ancient presence waiting in the rift doesn't hunger for flesh—it feeds on human self-awareness. Pride is the prey, identity is the bait, and the amnesia that Silas thought was a curse is the only armor he has left. From speculative fiction writer S.J. Miller comes a masterclass in atmospheric dread. RUSTED SAILS is a tight, cerebral, fast-paced science fiction novella that seamlessly marries the rugged, grease-stained soul of a Space Western to the mind-shattering terror of classic cosmic horror. The sails are spooled. The key is turning. The question is waiting. Scroll up and one-click your copy of RUSTED SAILS today to ride the slipstream into the absolute unknown.
