Richard Bailey
Bio
I am currently working on expanding my writing topics and exploring different areas and topics of writing. I have a personal history with a very severe form of treatment-resistant major depressive disorder.
Stories (91/591)
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Shadows in Velvet - Part 3
Rain traced the curved windows of the Skyglass Hall in thin silver lines, casting wavering shadows over the ballroom’s polished floor. Outside, Verashtel’s highest spire moaned faintly in the wind, but inside, the laughter was too loud, the music too sharp, and the masks far too fixed. Danger lingered beneath the perfume and poise.
By Richard Bailey7 months ago in Chapters
Shadows in Velvet - Part 2
The House of Falling Stars looked like something stitched from the dreams of an opium-drunk tailor. Its three towers leaned in opposing directions like dancers caught mid-spin. The walls were made of pale pink stone imported from some ruined temple in the east, veined with gold and soft to the touch. Water spilled in silent sheets down the front façade, catching the light of the sunrise in a thousand fractured colors. And on the threshold, etched above a set of polished blackwood doors, were the words: What you reveal, we record. What you hide, we sell.
By Richard Bailey7 months ago in Chapters
Shadows in Velvet - Part 1
The city of Verashtel didn’t sleep. It dreamed. Gilded bridges arched over canals where swan-headed gondolas glided silently, their lanterns glowing in shades of rose-gold and sea-glass green. Perfumed smoke curled from rooftop hookahs. Courtesans and spies wore mirrored masks that shimmered with spells to hide their true faces. Even the moon, pale and proud above the city’s spires, seemed half-masked behind silver clouds.
By Richard Bailey7 months ago in Chapters
The Thornvault Accord - Part 5
The Thornvault did not end. It shifted, peeled, and folded upon itself like a dying god breathing one last lie. Elira trudged through a world unraveling at the seams, where glass grass cracked beneath her boots and the trees above her blinked with eyes of burning sapphire. The realm was breaking, slowly, deliberately, like it wanted her to witness every fracture.
By Richard Bailey7 months ago in Chapters
The Thornvault Accord - Part 4
Vaelin awoke not in a cell, nor in a Citadel of cold walls and sharper laws, but in a clearing of impossible silence. Glass-thorn trees stretched around him in every direction, tall as cathedral spires, their trunks a translucent violet that shimmered like frozen moonlight. The sky above churned slowly with colors he had no names for—amber-gold bleeding into bruised lilac, split with veins of silver lightning that never cracked but simply hung, as though time had paused mid-scream.
By Richard Bailey8 months ago in Chapters
The Thornvault Accord - Part 3
Vaelin stood atop the high ramparts of Black Hollow Citadel, wind slicing across the stone like judgment. The chill did not bother him. It rarely did anymore. Below, a city moved with mechanical precision, smokestacks churned gray trails into a pale sky, and soldiers in mirror-polished black armor marched in perfect formation around a central spire where laws were carved not in ink, but in blood and steel.
By Richard Bailey8 months ago in Chapters
The Thornvault Accord - Part 2
Elira woke to the scent of roses. Not the kind that grew wild near her cabin window, nor the dry, bitter perfume nobles bathed in to hide their greed. These smelled of memory—thick with honey and heartbreak. She opened her eyes to soft golden light spilling through carved windows. A breeze stirred silk curtains. Her bed was vast, draped in crimson sheets stitched with fire-thread. A crown rested beside her pillow, its shape reminiscent of a blooming flame.
By Richard Bailey8 months ago in Chapters
The Thornvault Accord - Part 1
The fog clung low to the forest floor like spilled breath, curling around gnarled roots and swallowing bootsteps. Moonlight barely filtered through the canopy of blackwood branches above, their bark slick with silver dew and shadow. Somewhere ahead, the rogue Nightblade moved in silence, but Vaelin could sense him—just beyond the veil of perception, a ripple in the rhythm of the trees.
By Richard Bailey8 months ago in Chapters
A Blade for Her Name Part 5
Snow fell like memory in the Vale of Blackroot—soft, steady, ancient. The sky was a pale wound above jagged cliffs, clouds stretched thin like torn vellum. Beneath the weight of that silence, the air felt heavier, as if holding its breath for what came next.
By Richard Bailey8 months ago in Chapters
A Blade for Her Name Part 4
The ashes still clung to Elira’s cloak when they reached the edge of the ghostlands. They left Varnhold burning behind them—its vaults, its secrets, its execution orders—and entered a silence unlike any other. No birds. No wind. Just the soft crunch of frost-covered earth beneath their boots and the memory of Mael’s dying breath echoing like a curse in Vaelin’s ears.
By Richard Bailey8 months ago in Chapters
A Blade for Her Name - Part 3
It was raining by the time they reached the foothills of Kareth’s Hollow. Not a soft, forgiving rain—but the kind that carried weight, the kind that remembered the dead. The trail beneath their boots had dissolved into mud hours ago, and the cold made its way beneath cloaks and armor, into joints and breath and silence.
By Richard Bailey8 months ago in Chapters
A Blade for Her Name Part 2
The fortress rose like a scar from the bones of the mountain. They saw it by dusklight—its jagged spires clawing at the bleeding sky, its walls grown over with rune-veined stone that pulsed like veins beneath skin. The air was thin here in the Spine, and each breath came with a bitter aftertaste—magic long-soured by cruelty.
By Richard Bailey8 months ago in Chapters
