Born Under

Everyone is born under a sign, and the sign gives you one power for life. Nobody tells you the power comes with a bill.

Born Under is twelve standalone stories, one for each sign, each about an ordinary person and the price of what they are.

A mother who can shield anyone but herself, on the night a stranger comes to the door for her son. A father who can only reach his boy by hurting him, and feels every second of it. A con artist wearing a dead man's face, who realizes the face gets loved and he never did.

A hunter who goes blind the instant she aims, and a daughter standing somewhere behind her. A nurse who can save one dying patient only by lowering the other. A widow who slips into her comatose husband's dream every night and can no longer feel her own body in the chair.

No chosen ones. No saving the world. Just twelve people at the exact moment their gift asks for everything, in kitchens and hospitals and driveways that look exactly like yours.

Every story runs on the same rule. The power is real, the power is a curse, and the two are the same thing. You do not get the shield without being the one left exposed. You do not get to be certain without going blind to everything else. You do not climb without paying in years and scars you cannot hide.

Read them in any order. Read one and put the book down. They will still be sitting with you.

Twelve standalone stories set in a world where everyone is born under a star sign that grants one power, each following a different ordinary person at the moment their gift demands its price, from the mother who can shield everyone but herself to the nurse who can only save one life by spending another.

Born Under

Table of Contents

Every World. Story. Chapter. Word.