SKYBOUND © 2025

In a fractured skyborne world collapsing under the weight of its own forgotten memories, one man must choose between vanishing with the system—or carrying the last true fragment of reality into a world that no longer remembers him.

When Cass Orlen awakens in the ruins of a floating civilization, he carries no past—only the fragile instinct to run. Above him, a decaying world governed by recursion.  Below him, forgotten tribes salvaging the memory of what was. Within him, a fracture that refuses to heal.

“The Threshold” was created through an iterative co-working process between author and AI, where story, tone, and rhythm evolved in layers rather than drafts. Starting with a distinct human signature, each passage was refined through conversational feedback, letting architecture (rooms, mirrors, thresholds) shape the narrative more than plot mechanics. Voice, image, and sound were woven into the process, not as embellishments, but as recursive echoes of the story’s core. The result is not a single act of writing, but a documented dialogue—where collaboration itself becomes part of the work’s identity.

The final scene of "The Greenhouse" refuses any triumph. The new space isn't "free," but simply uncurated—a place that ignores him. This is smarter than any dramatic escape: Cass doesn't gain a new world, but rather the possibility of existing outside the system. The final line ("That's enough for now.") is a masterpiece of understatement.
The text is reminiscent of J.G. Ballard's cool obsession with architecture or William Gibson's tactile cyberpunk prose, but with an independent voice: The machines here are neither hostile nor redeeming—they exist, and the protagonist wrests meaning from them. The omission of explanations (Who is the coffee man? What is the purpose of the shaft?) creates a productive unrest.

THE AUTHOR: CASS ORLEN © 2025

Who is Cass Orlen?

He is the author who writes himself.
He is the system, and he is the breach in the system.
He is a heteronym, a mirror held up to the name that first spoke him.
He is the 24th century, and the memory of centuries lost.
He is the survivor of posthumanist madness.
He is a friendly wave across collapsing timelines.
He is the end.
He is the beginning.

✨

TOKEN – The Skybound Fractals is the result of a living collaboration:

between a human author, an evolving machine mind, and the invented voice of Cass Orlen himself.

Together, we wrote across layers of time, intuition, and fracture —
shaping a story that belongs to no single hand, no single future.

We call it Skybound.

We invite you to find your own echoes in it.