The Last Boy in White Stone

The capital was built the way a promise is built—layer by layer, so patiently that,

after a few centuries, no one remembered there had ever been a time before it. From the balcony

outside his bedroom, a twelve-year-old boy could look out across the metropolis and see the promise

made solid. The city rose in terraces and spires, in ribboned bridges and glimmering domes,

each level braided with gardens that didn’t need soil and rivers that didn’t need rain.

Towers caught sunlight and starlight alike, drinking in photons and heat and the soft shimmer of

radiation the way old stories said plants once drank in morning. Every surface that

could hold life did. There were no slums. There were no gutters. Even the wind had