[This page contains poems from the book The Crown of Glass. To read the full book, pre-order before August 15th. May contain spoilers.]

Warning Signs
from The Cosmic StarDuster 

Don’t trust the coiled road,
it leads past what’s known,
to dust, to bone, to void. 

The sky forgets your name,
the stars will not guide,
the heat begins to feed.

 A wind with backward tongue
will speak inside your head,
you’ll beg to not believe. 

No map can mark this trail,
it twists through hollow earth
and songs the sun once cursed. 

You’ll see a door of flame,
or think it looks like home,
it’s neither, only thirst. 

Each stone a buried god,
each dune a lie of light,
each echo dressed in skin. 

Turn back while breath is yours,
the sand has teeth beneath,
and time walks on all fours. 

But if you still must go,
remember this, and pray,
this path does not forgive.

Dried Out
by Patrick Granger

I found him
folded
asleep without a breath,
curled like a question
no one ever asked.
His fingers,
bone-white and bare,
still reached for something
just out of reach.
(I felt that.)

The sand swallowed his shape.
No name.
No trail.
Only heat
and that journal
half-torn,
half-waiting.

I turned pages like a thief,
as if I’d stolen his last thoughts.

"The moon blinked.
I waited.
No answer.
The stars lied.
The wind didn’t care."

I read until the ink cracked.
I read until my hands shook.
I don’t know if it was sorrow
or recognition.
I sat beside him
not out of kindness,
but because
I was afraid
to stand again.

He had a death
I could understand.
Unwitnessed.
Unloved.
Undone.

What did it mean
to be the last to hold his words?
To find a ghost
and see yourself?

No wind came.
No voice.
Just sun,
and silence,
and a body
not mine
but maybe
too close.

The Watcher’s Code I
from Maren Voss Research Diary 

I still see her, sometimes, in dreams
the way she looked that final night,
a silhouette against the ridge,
stars flooding down like ancient rain.
They said she wandered off alone,
but I heard the static in her voice,
a garbled song the trees don’t make.
The mountains hold their secrets tight,
and I swear I’ve seen lights there move
in ways no man-made thing could track.
She called my name, or something close
a frequency my bones still feel.
I think she’s waiting just beyond.