Beneath Ceaseless Skies #448, January 8, 2026

“The Stone’s Choice” by Anaea Lay

“Sing” by Jules Bly

Reviewed by David Wesley Hill

It’s a hard task to create a credible self-referential fantasy world in the space of a novelette, but this is what Anaea Lay sets out to do in their tale, “The Stone’s Choice,” the first offering of Beneath Ceaseless Skies #448. I could be wrong, but I Googled most of the names and places in the story, and found no correlation between these words and any contemporary or past society, so I am fairly confident assuming that Anaea Lay has woven their universe out of whole cloth, with no reference to our own world. I also suspect the author is a student of linguistics, since many of the characters’ names change declension depending on (I think) age, status, and whether or not they have completed their napi—apparently, a rite of passage like a Rumspringa. This, I suspect, would be fairly confusing to the average reader, but it intrigued me, and I rather enjoyed the milieu Anaea Lay creates—a world dominated by supernatural powers, which were subdued and bound by “pact-keepers” ten thousand years ago. One of these powers, an actual mountain, although constrained by magical wards, is still served by its personal witch—a sorcerer named Likhavsinkakti, who eventually rebels against the pact-keepers and reignites the ancient feud. We learn this through the eyes of a young child, Tadlomi, who lives in Lik, a metropolis in the shadow of the mountain, and who becomes a quasi-apprentice to the witch. Unfortunately, Tadlomi exists only as a narrative tool to bear witness to larger events—we know nothing of their friends and family, home life, schooling, etc., etc.—and this void prevented me from caring about them or the tale as a whole. Nonetheless, I applaud the author for their attempt to create a unique fictional universe, and I can cautiously recommend the story to fantasy aficionados with the caveat that a novel might have been a better showcase for such intricate world-building.

Next up is “Sing” by Jules Bly. Although I normally suggest that authors steer clear of the second-person voice, the conceit works for this story, in which the narrator, who “comes from a world before this one,” is counseling an unnamed singer, who is singing a song “in a language no one remembers.” This song describes every “action, every object, in the past and the present and the future,” including the singer’s sad destiny. The rub is, if the singer stops singing, or changes so much as a word of the song, the world will vanish … or will it? Eventually, the tale reveals itself to be a love story, and plucked at this reviewer’s withered heart strings enough so that I can recommend it. Go forth, BCS readers, and sing your own song!