Echoes of the End is the first volume of The Orchid Continuum, a collection of seven interconnected science-fiction stories set in a world where human life is measured, stored, and sold.Across memory markets, time prisons, artificial heavens, and forgotten cities, people struggle to survive inside a system that has learned how to turn suffering into profit. Some are trapped in loops of their own past. Some are offered perfect digital afterlives. Some are erased simply for refusing to be recorded.Each story stands on its own, yet together they reveal the outline of a vast hidden network controlling identity, history, and even death itself.These are not tales about saving the world. They are about what remains when the world has already been quietly lost.Echoes of the End is a dark, emotional, and high-concept introduction to a universe where the greatest threat is not machines, but what we allow them to decide for us.