"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

The godstorm left scars that weren’t visible. days after weathering it, Kael could still feel the phantom press of foreign memories against his thoughts—ghosts of lives he’d never lived, bleeding through the edges of his own consciousness like colors running together. A woman’s hands kneading bread dough. The metallic taste of fear before a battle. The slow, grinding ache of disease eating someone from the inside out.He’d learned to push them away, mostly. His father had taught him that, back when the dust-memories first started. “Build walls in your mind”, Marcus Ardren had said. “Make rooms for what’s yours and what’s not. Don’t let the dead crowd out the living”.Good advice, when the dead stayed quiet, but these memories weren’t quiet. They insisted, pressed against those mental walls with a persistence that spoke of intelligence, of purpose, as though something on the other side was testing the barriers, looking for weaknesses.Kael sat on the edge of the lead wagon’s run

They turned east at midday, as Tessa had said. The landscape shifted gradually—less open salt flat, more broken terrain. There were gullies carved by ancient floods that had happened when Tharos still walked, and boulder fields made of fossilized organs, each stone the size of a house. Places where god blood had crystallized in veins through the rock, glowing faintly even in daylight.Kael walked beside the lead wagon, letting his senses extend outward. The resonance here was different from the main routes—wilder, less disturbed by regular mining. He could hear layers of echo, palimpsests of non-human memory stacked like sedimentary rock.And beneath it all, a pulse. Slow. Steady. Almost like a heartbeat, if hearts could beat once per minute and shake the ground with each contraction.“You feel that?” Joren asked, falling into step beside him. The older man moved carefully, each breath deliberate. The corruption had spread visibly in the past few days—black veins now reaching past his

Lieutenant Sarrow had been waiting in the antechamber for three hours when they finally called her in.The room was deliberately uncomfortable—hard benches, no windows, and the temperature; kept just cold enough to be unpleasant without being actionable. This was standard imperial interrogation architecture. She'd sat in rooms like this before, on the other side, while suspects squirm while their fate was decided behind closed doors.She'd never expected to be the one squirming."Lieutenant Sarrow." The clerk—a thin woman with the dead eyes of someone who'd witnessed too many disciplinary hearings—appeared at the inner door. "The tribunal will see you now."Sarrow stood, straightened her uniform with hands that wanted to shake but didn't, and walked into the interrogation chamber.Three officers sat behind an elevated bench. Colonel Marek in the center—silver-haired, career military, famous for leading the suppression of the Broken Coast rebellion five years ago. To his left, Command

Captain Reeve couldn’t sleep. It wasn’t unusual—he’d been an insomniac since the Blackstone Incident six years ago. But tonight, the restlessness felt different; purposeful, as if something in the air itself was charged with anticipation.He stood outside the command tent in the pre-dawn darkness, drinking piss-poor coffee and watching the resonance-tracker displays flicker with ambient divine energy. The mechanical gauges—delicate brass instruments with oscillating needles mounted on god-bone frameworks—showed readings climbing steadily for three days now. Nothing dramatic, just a slow upward curve that suggested increased activity in the god-bones beneath their feet.Tharos was stirring, responding to something. Or someone, he thought to himself.“Sir.” Sergeant Kolm appeared from the darkness, moving with the silent efficiency of a veteran scout. “Observation post three reports movement. Two miles northeast, approaching the riverbed entrance. Multiple individuals, traveling slowly.