God Grave
The god is dead, but its memory is hungry.
Three thousand years ago, the god Tharos fell. Today, his fossilized remains—the Lorn Expanse—serve as the lifeblood of an empire. In the shadow of the Ribs of Lorn, the Empire of the Spine mines god-bone and harvests aetherich to power a civilization of brass and gears. But for those who toil in the dust, the cost of progress is madness.
Kael is a survivor of the bone mines, forever changed by a catastrophic collapse in Chamber 19. While others died from the weight of divine essence, Kael woke with the "hum" in his blood. He now hears the frequencies of the dead god and tastes memories trapped in the dust—a gift that feels more like a slow-acting poison. He wants only to survive the grueling life of a scavenger, hiding the resonance that marks him as different.
Everything changes when he encounters Ilara, a woman whose voice carries a power that shouldn't exist. She is a Vessel, capable of singing raw god-bone into life, and she is being hunted by the Empire’s mechanical enforcers.
The Empire has spent centuries trying to stabilize divine energy, but Kael and Ilara represent something they cannot control: a living connection to a waking god. As the "Thrice-Born" prophecy stirs and the ground beneath the salt flats vibrates with a terrifying new rhythm, the two must flee toward the heart of the god’s corpse.
In a world where technology is fueled by the sacred and bone-tech determines the hierarchy of man, Kael and Ilara must decide if they are the harbingers of a new era or the final echoes of a dying god's scream.
GODGRAVE is a dark industrial fantasy that explores the intersection of faith, machinery, and the heavy price of remembering.
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Chapter: Confessions pt 3"I had a sister," he said finally, the words coming without conscious decision. "Younger. Living in the coastal cities, if she's still alive. I haven't seen her in three years.""Why not?""Because deserters can't exactly visit family without imperial agents showing up." He touched his corrupted neck, feeling the black veins pulse beneath his fingertips. "And because I didn't want her seeing me like this. Better she thinks I died in service than knowing I'm rotting slowly in the Expanse.""Does she know what you did? What happened in that chamber?""No. I never told her about the missions, the operations. I only sent letters saying I was doing well, rising through ranks, making the family proud." Joren smiled bitterly. "She thought I was a hero, a proper imperial soldier protecting the empire from threats. She wrote back telling me about her studies—she's training to be a physician—about how she wanted to work in the outer territories helping people who couldn't afford expensive
Last Updated: 2026-01-10
Chapter: Confessions pt 2"When we breached that door, it released the unfiltered aetherich that had been building up in the chamber for a decade, it was the kind of exposure that killed." The moment replayed in his mind with perfect clarity—the door coming down, the rush of air that tasted like bronze and ozone, the civilians' faces—fear giving way to confusion as his squad members started falling."Three soldiers died on the spot. They Just collapsed, as their brains couldn't adjust to the frequency." Joren touched his neck, the gesture unconscious. "Two others developed sensitivity, started hearing things, feeling things they couldn't explain. Command pulled them out within hours, sent them to research facilities for evaluation.""And you got corrupted," Petran said quietly."Wrong genetics. I had some compatibility markers—enough that the exposure didn't kill me outright, but not enough to develop actual abilities. So my body tried to adapt and failed. The dust got into my cells, my brain, and started
Last Updated: 2026-01-10
Chapter: Confessions pt 1Joren couldn't sleep. The corruption always got worse at night, pulsing, spreading, reminding him that each waking moment he spent brought him inches away from death.He sat watch beside the cold fire pit, checking the perimeter more from habit than necessity. Nothing moved in the salt flats except bone-crawlers hunting in the dark. Their carapaces caught starlight, gleaming like mother-of-pearl as they skittered across a vertebrae half-buried in sediment.Military training died hard. Even now, three years after desertion, and two years into corruption, he still checked sight lines and approach vectors, positioning himself where he could see threats before they saw him —old habits from a life he'd left behind, or tried to."Joren?" A hesitant voice came from the darkness. Petran emerged from between the wagons, moving with the careful quiet of someone trying not to wake others. "I didn't mean to startle you."Joren's hand had already moved to his knife before he registered who it
Last Updated: 2026-01-10
Chapter: Schemes and Plans After the Council session, Sereen returned to her private quarters in the Spine's administrative district. The apartment was sparse—she'd never cared much for luxury or comfort. Function mattered. Results mattered. Everything else was distraction.She poured herself a glass of wine—good vintage, a gift from Councilor Venn after their last successful Engine activation—and stood at the window overlooking the Corpse Vault entrance.The entrance was a massive archway carved directly into Tharos's sternum, flanked by guard towers and defensive emplacements. Sealed doors of god-bone and steel, three feet thick, designed to withstand anything short of a direct Engine blast. Beyond those doors lay the Deep Spine—the network of chambers and passages that followed Tharos's preserved circulatory system down into the corpse's core.And at the very center, in a chamber flooded with preservation aetherich, lay Tharos's heart.Still intact. Still, in some incomprehensible way, still beating.Once ev
Last Updated: 2025-12-18
Chapter: The CouncilThe Council chamber was already full when Sereen arrived.Twelve chairs arranged in a circle, each occupied by a member of the Engine Council—the administrative body that governed all aspects of god-corpse exploitation throughout the empire. Miners and engineers, physicians and philosophers, military commanders and bureaucrats. The most powerful people in the empire, second only to the Emperor himself.And they were all looking at her.“Lady Marcellus.” Councilor Venn spoke first—an older man with the weathered face of someone who’d spent decades in the field before ascending to administrative power. “Thank you for joining us. We’ve been reviewing the incident reports from the Lorn Expanse. Concerning developments.”“Concerning,” Sereen agreed, taking her seat. “But manageable.”“Manageable?” Councilor Thrace—younger, aggressive, politically ambitious—leaned forward. “Two unregistered resonants with combined capabilities exceeding our trained operators, currently loose in imperial ter
Last Updated: 2025-12-18
Chapter: The Architect's VisionLady Sereen Marcellus stood before the God-Engine and felt nothing.This bothered her more than she cared to admit.The Engine filled the chamber—thirty feet of crystallized aetherich suspended in a lattice of god-bone and imperial steel, pulsing with a rhythm that mimicked a heartbeat if hearts beat once every seven seconds. Blue-white light flickered through its core, casting shadows that moved wrong, that bent at angles geometry couldn't explain. The air hummed with barely contained divine energy, a frequency that made most people nauseous after prolonged exposure.Sereen had been standing here for three hours and felt perfectly fine."My lady." Her chief engineer, a nervous man named Pavik, approached with a leather portfolio stuffed with paper records and a calculation slate tucked under his arm. "The resonance spike you requested confirmation on—we've verified it. Two sources, operating in tandem. The synchronization is… unprecedented.""Show me."Pavik set the slate on the near
Last Updated: 2025-12-18
