First Chapter  sneak peak                                                                                                                                           Coreline

 

Written by• Justnox •

© 2025 Justnox

All rights reserved.

 

 Original Story

 

Author note: We are like lights in a city; blaze bright at night. We can't escape; turn darkness to light. Just like it, we stand out but hide, until one faithful day we burn out of sight.

Glow every day, as if it were your last on this earth.

Note - This story takes the time it needs to introduce and unravel its characters, world, and setting.

Let it spread its wings, and you will be surprised at how far it will take you.

 

ENTRY_log.00 - Designed to fall

 

 

Ever thought about how you'd imagine the sky if you never saw a glimpse of it?

Oh, or this is an interesting one.

How would you clean something that is inherently dirty and toxic by nature?

Imagine looking up just to see that, for the very ceiling you look up at, is just the floor for someone else to walk by.

To know that'd never think about gazing down.

What if the very rain that fell from overhead were just the runoff from someone else's world?

Suddenly, the words clean or Sky, roof, and ceiling get a whole new meaning, don't they?

​

Now imagine again. It's like the old question of

“Do you believe in UFOs? Cause I don't. Well...didn't, until one crashed twenty feet in front of me.”

Instead of doubting UFOs, people started to doubt justice.

Welcome to Coreline. Welcome to the place where your imagination got caged, taxed, and sold off, even before you could notice.

Here, it was raining again.

All the way at the Great Nexus, one could assume these raindrops were as pure as the ocean.

Citizens who walked by saw these through clean air.

The bright blue sky overhead added waves of reflections from sunrays that periodically pierced through the seeping water droplets. They emerged through small vent-like hatches. Many of which were placed all around the very, very top buildings of the city.

They were called ‘Scratchers’ Since they quite literally scratch the sky.

Constructed out of glass, they imposed a menacing aura.

Here, only a fraction of the population could afford to live this comfortable life, far above mortal problems, their bodies mechanically adjusted with biomechanical implants. Some fancy bridge-streets that connected buildings, creating roads and tufts of floors that remind one of a tree with branches and leaves.

Some rain pearled off fancy umbrellas along its way. The citizens did not spare one glance at the seeping water, for it was only dropping downward, never to come up again.

After all, everything that went south lost value, right?

Advertisements for new implants. The newest and fanciest upgrades, or other overpriced consumables, were tainted with glamour and prestige. Billboards that read “The future of Coreline lies in the hands of the PTC” or “Why look down, if the progress is above?” gave a false feeling of comfort. One particularly large sign read “The Great Nexus. The district of your dreams.”

However, the rain continued to drip down. With no will of its own, the city guided it. No, use it. Abused it. It glides over massive, clean streets and off giant statues and polished marble.

Eventually, the rain reached a thick polished quartz floor that separated two worlds.

​

Below the dividing line, the city continued, and the struggles began. This time, most of the colour was replaced with a dull gray. The glass was now replaced by concrete, and the sun was replaced by lamps.

Gone was the white, stale quartz, the fancy marble or polished streets, altogether with the fancy looks.

Gone, too, was the clean air.

The rain fled through to the other side with the help of open conductors. Now pouring down, similar to a gentle yet oppressive waterfall. The streams slid down the buildings as they impacted onto some more bridge-streets, floating from building to building, creating loose puddles between the connections. The rain struck down on heads and fur, soaking the inhabitants. Yet, they welcomed the rain for it cleaned their streets.

It navigated through the mazes of apartments with belching steam and endless pipes. Many shops and market stalls were either closed or completely soaked.

Inside the office buildings and living quarters, the sound of rain pattered softly against the windows. Its impact has been damped, humming peacefully in an unpredictable pattern.

They too crossed advertisements such as, “The PTC Enforces your rights! Get our agency ! get our lawyers!” or “The middle district, far from hell but close to heaven!”

The majority of the water was rapidly descending even deeper into the city's heart.

It crossed attractions such as amusement parks, dropped onto pipes, and transferred goods. This environment truly reminds one of a forest, with its tree stems all reaching far and high. The rain finally came up on yet another thick wall. Now, solid and dirty concrete stood in its way. The, by now worn, water burst through rusty pipes into the other side.

The once gentle water now resembled a raging flood, hammering down like a tsunami. This far down the streets pulsed with the electric hum of billboards, their flickering glow drenching the streets in Neon. The ads were simpler with many shops or stalls. Few were directed to the PTC, one read.

“The lower district, the foundation of the PTC, the foundation of your future.”

Here, the impacted storm crushed unprepared citizens under its weight. They didn't welcome it, and it didn't welcome them either. The Haze pushed against it, mixing up in dirt where sprinkles splashed meters into the air.

They painted themselves in Neon lights, sparklingly dancing off every surface.

An innocent beauty. These were the roots, carving in dirt and feasting on leftovers. Intertwined into the waste, it grew comfortable with it and learned to adapt.

Deep into the city, the rain lacked its previous comforting blue.

All that remained was a thick, chemical goo pumped straight from the climate ducts up north. It emerged from the Nexus district's weathering system, crossing every sector.

It vanished into the debts of the iron coffin.

​This wasn't the usual kind of rain. It was the kind that Coreline called a ‘flush’. You see, rain in Coreline wasn’t weather, it was a policy. It automatically triggers when smog levels hit a critical density, equivalent to an ecosystem's response.

The PTC claimed it helped “push the haze down. Thin out the particles in the air… ” before choking the mid-levels. They should get ‘Recycled’ at the bottom - though nobody really knew where the bottom even lurked.

Bullshit, all it did was push problems lower or turn an hourglass upside down. Word was, they even used it to wash away whatever they didn’t want found: evidence or sometimes even people.

The rain only smeared the grime back into its old corners, to look away until it crawled out again like it had so many times before. Rain as the policy was like emotion as a command.

Yet somehow, the flush always painted the streets with glimpses of hope, as if it made everything seem a little lighter. The city looked good in the Flush. Trying to wash its sins clean, even if they never came off. The only things that came off were the dry blood stains on the walls, but even those returned, eventually.

If you couldn't tell, Coreline was a special city, stacked on top of itself: district after district, sector after sector, and layer after layer. It was stretching in every direction, swallowing the horizon. Coreline was a beast that never stopped growing. It never slept. It feasted on people, with corruption until it choked on it, spitting out the smog-filled air, pain, and chaos that was boiling from within.

Progress here was built on concrete and blood. The future grows with the price of lost souls.

The sky? A lie, at least for most of Coreline's population. A patchwork of platforms, suspended streets, and shiny ad signs was the closest thing to stars they'll ever experience.

Life in Coreline was simple. It wasn't cheap. It was owed. So you owe. You work. Or you disappear.

At last, the water came down all the way to the Undercity, a place that had been rarely talked about - only with faint whispers and a hand held in front of your mouth. It too had been completely sealed off by a floor as thick as ten walls. People don't know what's in there.

They shouldn't.

This was where even the chemical gray goo had been pumped down. It was a place where not even the trash was worth throwing at.

Coreline was a harsh environment. These days, hardly anyone still believes in the system. They know the truth, they assume. So they stroll through the city, heads down, shoulders hunched, navigating around potholes and puddles of something you don't want to step in. Some herbivores drag themselves home from shifts that drain the last bit of their soul. Others, mostly carnivores, linger in the alleys, sharp-eyed and waiting for the next sucker to fall into their game.

It's a destructive economy that feeds on itself, a machine built to crush and consume.

It's the kind of city where you keep your creds close in your pocket and your back even closer to the wall. The government? Long privatized. Led by the CorelinePTC, which had been completely corrupt for decades.

The holo-ads promise a brighter future through CoreCo innovation. CoreCo, you ask? Well, they are the sister company of the PTC. Besides some minor other splits of brands, they manage infrastructure, at least they pretend to.

Projects are dropped the same week they started.

Poorly implemented Infrastructure , sloppy maintenance, and late buses, paired with ever-increasing prices. Just some of their business tactics.

Somewhere in the city... Someone was about to drown in the rain. He will set up a chain reaction that will kick off our journey through this city.

So once again, I welcome you to Coreline...

 

 

 

 

 

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