Shape Bender (2024)

For a long moment, the Aligner said nothing.

Leo still worked at the Blueprint Bureau. But now, at the bottom of every blueprint, in tiny, wiggly letters, he wrote: shape bender

The outside was a myth to most citizens. Beyond Ortho’s perfect walls lay the Unshaped—a gray, featureless expanse where nothing had form. It was a place of pure possibility, and Ortho had been built precisely to avoid it. For a long moment, the Aligner said nothing