Orc Sized Love and the Neon Glitch

Machines remember. Cities watch. Love becomes the unexpected patch in a broken system. New Fay City—San Francisco renamed in the late 2020s—hums with neon and uneasy magic in 2053, decades after the Aetherfall comet first tore the sky. Kira Sterling keeps her grief folded tight until echoes of her brother’s voice begin surfacing in the Glitchbox’s circuitry, a car whose AI carries something like a ghost. A spark with C. J.

, an orc mechanic from the slums, turns a routine morning into a brutal pursuit: the Syndicate’s deadliest blade has her marked for silence over secrets she never asked for. The city closes in; she chooses to stand and strike back. With the help of friends—old allies and newly found ones—and an irrepressible goblin bulldog called Tank, they strike back against Syndicate shadows and the dark boardroom sins buried beneath New Fay’s neon. C. J.