The Cartographer and the Shadow Weaver: Fantasy Romance

Emma’s world was a symphony of ghosts. To others, the cobbled streets of Aethelgard were just that—stones worn smooth by generations of footsteps, buildings weathered by salt and sea air. To Emma, they were pages in a history book she alone could read. Her gift, or her curse, was the ability to perceive the “memory echoes” of a place. A crumbling brick wall whispered of the mason’s hand that laid it; a sun-baked pier sang a silent shanty of a hundred ships that had docked there. She was a cartographer, but her maps charted not just physical space, but time itself.She sat in her small studio, the scent of parchment and ink thick in the air, a half-finished map of the old market district spread across her drawing table. She was mapping the echoes today, a project she kept secret from all. She drew faint, ethereal lines over the bustling present-day market—a line where a child had once dropped a wooden toy, a shimmering patch where a couple had shared their first kiss a century ago. It was a beautiful, lonely work.Bonus story included!The Chronomancer’s Echo.