"We dream of angels, black as space, and wish they could return from the future to warn us of the dark years ahead. We who have forgotten our origin, exiles in a land we may have shaped with our own hands; we who struggle to find meaning in a world that only vouchsafes us deadly revelation; we wage war, for reasons now lost to us, and our hopes are as tenuous as the light of a single star." In these twelve sombre tales, ranging from baroque science fiction to bleak fantasy, Yves Meynard brings to life wonders and horrors. From space travellers who must rid themselves of the sins their souls accumulate in transit, to a young man whose love transcends time; from refugees in a frozen hold at the end of space, to a city drowning under the weight of its architectural prayer; from an alien Jerusalem that has corrupted the Earth, to a land still bleeding from the scars of a supernatural war; here are windows opened onto astonishing vistas, stories written with a scientist's laser focus alloyed with a poet's sensibilities.