Beneath Ceaseless Skies #469, Oct. 29, 2026

“No Requiem Will Be Sung for the White Dahlia Movement” by Claire Jia-Wen

“Aspect of the Moth” by Jonathan Olfert

Reviewed by Wendy Vidlak

“No requiem Will Be Sung For the White Dahlia Movement” by Claire Jia-Wen follows two student revolutionaries through a cultural reformation as their country moves from Old Magic and the worship of ancient souls to the new magic of the leader known as the Deliverer and the Citizens Deliverance Army.

Severin, who is gifted in the Old Magic, but rebuked the gift for the new magic of engineering and management, grew up as friends with Cassander, whose mom was an old magic teacher before the revolution. Cassander grew up in a life of privilege under the Old Magic system of kings, where Severin had a father that toiled in the salt mines, and the family lived in poverty. Severin could have escaped poverty by going to magic university, but refused to confess to having old magic. This decision served him well when the new regime took power and allowed him to join the Little Blue Citizens group rather than be hidden away and tortured. Once the new regime took power, Cassander and Severin’s lives turned around completely, and they lost touch. This story was an excellent allegory of how cultural change can upend social systems and how interpersonal relations can become fraught as times and people change.

“Aspect of the Moth” by Jonathan Olfert offers a deep character study in this novelette. With home as the overarching theme we follow an old sorcerer returning to the home and religion of their childhood. Sneaking in under the cover of darkness, hunted by the new conquerors of another faith, he looks to the old crevices to find the caves he used to haunt as a child where his grandmother taught him that the god she worshipped lived. They also hold the centipedes he used to hunt and cherish as a child. He finds that the caves are different now that he has grown and are not the fitting lair he had hoped to build there. The resident priests of the new religion of the land find him magically and hunt him through the caverns of the land. All the while, he asks himself the question of what home really is and whether we can ever find it again once we leave and mature?