Novels by S. Sage

A rusted nail drove itself between his hemispheres. That was the only way to describe the pain. Kaelen collapsed, his knees cracking against the temple's stone floor. His hands grabbed at his own head. His newly formed metal claws dragged across his scalp, pulling out strands of hair as he tried to dig the agony out of his skull.A vision forced its way into his mind. It wasn't his. It was the residual memory of the Zealot he had just drained, a final insult before the man's Aether Core settled completely into Kaelen's chest.He saw a sky the color of infected blood. It was a violent, unnatural red, heavy with a suffocating heat. Massive, pulsing tendrils of golden light reached down from the heavens, sifting through the clouds like the fingers of a starving beggar. They found the earth. They sank deep into the crust of Aethelgard. The light wasn't a blessing. It was a feeding tube. The Sun God—the absolute truth of the Aegis Theocracy, the entity he had spent his life running from—wa

The temple smelled of stale dust and old copper. Kaelen stepped over the heavy stone threshold, his boots shifting through a layer of pulverized rock. He stopped, letting his eyes adjust, though the darkness here felt thick. It pressed against his ebon scales.He rubbed the back of his neck, feeling a dull ache settling at the base of his skull. He let out a slow breath. The moisture from his exhale lingered in the freezing air."You look the part, boy," Malakor murmured. The entity’s voice didn't echo; it just sat like a dead weight behind Kaelen's eyes. "Keep walking. Let’s see what the light-worshippers left to rot."Kaelen didn't answer. He dragged a sleeve across his forehead, wiping away a smear of grime and sweat, then pushed his Aether sight outward. The pitch-black chamber painted itself in muted greys and faint, sickly violet lines.He walked toward the far wall. His footsteps were quiet, muffled by the shadow that clung to his legs—the Shroud of the Void. It wasn't a consci

The wind tasted like old pennies and rotten eggs. Kaelen spat a glob of dark saliva over the edge of the rock, watching it fall into the violet mist below. He rubbed his mouth with the back of a filthy glove, feeling the grit of the ash against his skin. His boots ached. The long climb into the higher elevations of the Obsidian Mountains had left his calves burning and his breathing shallow in the thin, toxic air. His coat was torn, stiff with dried blood from the lesser beasts he had butchered along the way.Down in the valley, half-swallowed by the bruised purple fog, sat a ruined temple. Jagged stone pillars jutted from its roof like broken ribs. Colossal mana crystals, cracked and bleeding sluggish purple light, clung to the masonry.Kaelen didn't care about the architecture. He was staring at the courtyard.Something massive was breathing down there.It sounded like boulders grinding together. The creature was easily three stories tall, an ugly, heavy thing that moved with a slow

The air near the summit of the Obsidian Mountains didn't just blow. It carried teeth.Microscopic volcanic grit whipped across the exposed ridge, scraping against Kaelen's jaw. He raised an arm to shield his eyes, coughing dryly as the toxic atmosphere caught in the back of his throat. He rubbed the back of his neck, his fingers coming away dark with sweat and ash. He stood near the edge of a sheer drop, his boots planted on cracked black stone, looking up at a sky that looked like a bruised, rotting plum.He blinked, letting his vision shift out of focus. The world overlay itself with a new spectrum. Luminous, heavy veins of raw Aether pulsed through the air, drifting like lazy currents in a deep ocean. Staring at them too long always gave him a dull headache, a tight throbbing right behind his temples."Look at it bleed," Malakor's voice rasped in his mind. It sounded like a man dragging a rusty shovel across concrete. "The world drains out while the Aegis Order sits on their hands,

The sole of Kaelen's left boot caught on a jagged lip of volcanic glass. He stumbled, catching his balance with a heavy footfall that sent a spray of black dust over the edge of the ridge. He stopped for a moment, staring blankly at the dust as it settled onto the dead earth below. His calves burned from the climb. The air up here didn't feel like air. It tasted like old pennies and sulfur, heavy in his lungs.He dragged the back of his wrist across his mouth. It came away smeared with a mix of sweat and the dark, dried blood of the Aegis hounds he had killed hours ago. The stain on his skin bothered him, but he didn't have the water to spare to clean it. He just wiped his wrist against his leather trousers and kept moving.The Obsidian Mountains stretched upward, a desolate expanse of pitch-black stone and jagged spires. Above, the sky was the color of a day-old bruise, a sickly violet choked with slow-moving currents of ash. It was pure Aether radiation leaking from the upper peaks.

The air in the Wasteland of Echoes tasted like old pennies and battery acid. Kaelen sat on the edge of a massive, half-buried jawbone. He scraped his thumb over the brass identification tag in his hand. The metal was dull, stamped with the cracked sun emblem of his former life.His thumb caught on the edge. Tiny, obsidian-colored scales had begun to emerge along his knuckles over the past two days. They rubbed against the brass with a faint, gritty sound. He still was not used to the feeling.He dropped the tag into a shallow rock crevice. It was centered in a patch of flat, cracked dirt. Around it lay the butchered remains of three Venom-spine Basilisks. Thick black blood pooled in the dry earth, drawing flies that died as soon as they touched the corrosive fluid.A cold pressure settled at the base of Kaelen's neck. The shadow cast by the bone beneath him stretched, thickening into a dark smear that vaguely resembled a half-closed eye."Baiting them," Malakor murmured. The voice did