4308.263 · September 19, 1988 AD
Secrets in the Downpour
The sky breaks open over Broken Hill. Violet and Jasmine run for shelter, crashing through the arcade doors and into a stranger with ice-blue eyes who watches a moment too long before vanishing into the rain. Inside, Mandy waits with a discovery: an old art book, forgotten for decades, and a note folded between its pages. "The truth lies within the art. Seek the brush that paints in shadows." The storm outside is nothing compared to what's gathering within.
A small town's silence is never empty—it's just waiting for the right ear to listen."
The storm arrives like judgement—sudden, furious, inescapable. Violet drags Jasmine through sheets of rain toward the arcade, lungs burning, uniforms soaked through. They collide with a man at the entrance. Dark stubble. Pale eyes that hold hers a fraction too long. He retrieves his scattered belongings without apology and disappears into the downpour like he was never there.
Inside, the arcade hums with displaced townsfolk and the smell of hot chips. Mandy sits alone with an art book she found buried behind encyclopaedias in the school library—untouched for years, maybe decades. Between its pages, a note written in faded ink: "The truth lies within the art. Seek the brush that paints in shadows."
Before they can unravel its meaning, Mandy's mother appears with urgency in her eyes and secrets pressing at her lips. The gossiping women at the next table trade whispers like currency. Something is happening beneath the surface of this town—something that touches Mandy's family, something that follows Violet like a shadow she can't outrun.
Everyone has secrets. And in Broken Hill, they never stay buried for long.
