THE THIRTEENTH

In the outer reaches of settled space, beneath unending icy storms and the indifferent light of distant stars, the “THIRTEENTH LIGHTHOUSE” communications node operates. Among the white wastelands and obsolete, cracked regulations, one duty guard—whether a person or someone who simply believes they are one—keeps watch over silence and order.

Tyver is bound to the schedule and instructions: he maintains shift rhythm, marks routes, verifies routine actions down to the step. The only thread to the world is a voice from the neighboring station—rare presence in a dying ether. But one day, the antenna goes silent, the connection is cut off, and Tyver has to break the main prohibition: don’t go too far from the post.

One sortie. One contact. One mistake in the system—and the thin partition between memory and fabrication, reality and fog, the familiar and the hostile starts to creep apart like a softened mat under your feet.

This planet looks firmly frozen.

But what if, beneath the thickness of ice, someone—or something—is still alive and breathing?

Important: this is not easy reading, but a dense, slow plunge into someone else’s mind, where reality thickens and resists.