All Chapters of God Grave : Chapter 1
- Chapter 10
13 chapters
The Ribs of Lorn
The dust tasted like memory. Kael had learned that years ago, down in the bone mines where his father died. God-dust didn't sit on your tongue like salt or sand—it dissolved, left you with flashes of someone else's life. A woman's laugh. The smell of burnt cedar. The shape of a word you'd never spoken. But that dust, and the one in the air now, was a different dust—the processed kind, rendered down until most of the resonance had been burned away. What he’d breathed during the collapse, trapped in Chamber 19 for six hours while they dug toward him through rubble, that had been raw. Uncut. The kind of concentrated divine essence that should have killed him like it had killed the others. The raw kind, still humming with whatever made gods divine. Six hours trapped in Chamber 19 while they dug toward him, breathing nothing but concentrated memory. He spat into the grit and kept walking. The Ribs rose ahead of him, bone-white against the salt flats, curved high enough to sw
The Vessel (pt1)
Ilara woke to the taste of bronze in her mouth and the absolute certainty that she was going to die today.Not metaphorically. Not eventually. Today.She sat up in her cot, breathing hard, the dream still clinging to her thoughts like cobwebs. In it she'd been standing in a place made of ribs and shadows, and something vast had been speaking her name—except it wasn't her name, not really. It was older than that. A title. A designation.Vessel. Singer. Key."Stop it," she whispered to the empty room. "You're not crazy. You're just tired."The room didn't answer, which was good. The day she started getting responses from furniture was the day she'd know she'd finally lost it.She swung her legs off the cot, wincing as her bare feet touched the cold stone floor. The dormitory room was small—barely eight feet square—with whitewashed walls, a single narrow window, and a shelf containing everything she owned in the world: three books, two changes of clothes, and a wooden box with a br
The Vessel (pt 2)
Prelate Sorin's office was on the third floor of the administrative wing, accessed by a narrow spiral staircase that made Ilara's legs burn. She climbed slowly, bag slung over one shoulder, trying to prepare herself for whatever was waiting at the top.The door was already open.Inside, Prelate Sorin sat behind his desk—a massive thing made of god-bone and dark wood that made him look even smaller than he was. Standing on either side of him were two figures in the grey coats of the imperial bureaucracy, silver pins glinting at their collars. Both were women. One was older, maybe fifty, with iron-grey hair pulled back in a severe bun. The other was younger, thirtyish, with sharp features and eyes that tracked Ilara's every movement like a hawk watching prey."Ilara Vale," Sorin said, not bothering with pleasantries. "Sit."There was only one chair. She sat, clutching her bag in her lap like a shield."Do you know why you're here?" the older woman asked. Her voice was clipped, educ
Convergence (pt1)
The bleeding had stopped, but Kael's head still rang with echoes.He sat on the tailgate of Tessa's supply wagon, a cloth pressed to his nose, watching the southern horizon where the distortion had been. It was gone now—faded like morning mist—but the resonance hadn't returned to normal. The bones still hummed wrong, a frequency that set his teeth on edge and made his skull ache.Around him, the caravan was a controlled chaos of frightened people trying to pretend they weren't frightened."Drink this." Joren pressed a tin cup into his hand. Water, blessedly cold.Kael drank, tasting salt and metal. "How many others?""Bled? Seven. Old Meris passed out but he's awake now. The Sohm sisters are fine—they never worked the deep mines, so less dust in their blood." Joren sat beside him, moving carefully. "Petran's having a panic attack. Cors is talking him down.""He shouldn't be out here. Too young.""We were all too young once." Joren's voice was flat, distant. He was staring at hi
Convergence (pt2)
The riders resolved into clear shapes as they approached. Nine total, wearing the grey-and-silver of imperial scouts. But there was something wrong about the formation—three of them were surrounding something in the center. Not protecting it, exactly. More like containing it.A carriage. Small, reinforced, the kind used for transporting valuable cargo or dangerous prisoners.The imperial riders slowed as they neared the wagon circle, hands visible on reins, a gesture of non-aggression that fooled exactly no one. The leader was a woman—tall, lean, with the weathered look of someone who'd spent years in the field. She raised one hand in greeting."Caravan master Tessa Vrome?" Her voice carried easily across the distance.Tessa stepped forward, crossbow lowered but ready. "That's me. Who's asking?""Lieutenant Sarrow, Frontier Scout Division." The woman dismounted with practiced ease. "We're escorting imperial cargo south to the Spine. Saw your dust trail and thought we'd check if y
Convergence (pt3)
Something rose from beneath the salt crust, pushing up through layers of compacted sediment and fossilized bone. A shape made of white light and shadow, vaguely humanoid but wrong in its proportions. Too tall, too thin, limbs that bent at impossible angles.A god-spawn. Born from the resonance spike, given form by the concentration of divine remnants in the area.It had no face, but Kael felt it looking at him. At the girl. At the space between them where two sources of resonance had met and created something neither could control alone.“Oh gods,” someone whispered.“DEFENSIVE POSITIONS!” Tessa roared.But the god-spawn wasn’t attacking. It was just standing there, head tilted as if listening to something none of them could hear. Then, slowly, it raised one too-long arm and pointed.South.Toward the Spine.Toward the heart of Tharos’s corpse.And in that moment, Kael understood with absolute certainty what was happening. The distortion hadn’t been random. The girl’s singing hadn’t b
God Storm
They saw the godstorm on the horizon at dawn.Red sky bleeding into purple. Clouds that moved wrong, spiraling clockwise when wind blew east. Lightning that struck upward instead of down.“Everyone up!” Tessa’s voice cut through camp. “Storm incoming! We need to move NOW!”The caravan exploded into motion. Canvas torn down, supplies thrown into wagons, teams harnessed with shaking hands. Godstorms were deadly—not from rain or wind, but from what they did to memory.Get caught in one and you might forget your name. Your family. Who you were entirely.Kael ran to the supply wagon where Ilara was already helping tie down loose cargo. Her hands moved fast, efficient. Whatever else she’d learned in the orphanage, she knew how to work.“How bad?” she asked.“Bad. That’s a full resonance storm. Category three at least.” Kael grabbed a rope, started securing a water barrel. “We need to get to shelter. There’s supposed to be a waystation six miles south—”“We won’t make it,” Joren interrupted,
The Architect's Vision
Lady 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
The Council
The 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
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