All Chapters of Monarch of the Calamity Beast: Chapter 1
- Chapter 10
11 chapters
Prologue: Birth of the Calamity
Kaelen swallowed, tasting copper and dirt. He spat a mouthful of bloody saliva into the mud at his boots. The rain over the Karst Ridge vanguard camp was steady, a miserable, freezing drizzle that smelled like sulfur and stung the eyes. He wiped his face with a mud-caked sleeve, smearing the grime rather than clearing it. He blinked, trying to get the grit out of his lashes.His left hand pressed hard against his ribs. The boiled leather armor was split there, the fabric underneath soaked through and heavy. Blood seeped between his fingers, warm and sticky, contrasting sharply with the freezing rain. It was a stupid wound, caught from a stray piece of shrapnel during the first wave an hour ago. Now it throbbed with a dull, rhythmic ache that matched his heartbeat. He shifted his weight, and a sharp spike of pain shot up his side, forcing him to lean heavily on his right leg.He looked down at his right hand. He was gripping a standard-issue iron longsword. Most of it was gone. Only ab
Chapter 1: Awakening from the Dust of Death
The grit in Kaelen's mouth tasted like old pennies and sulfur. He lay on his side, his cheek pressed flat against the jagged volcanic crust of the wasteland. Every breath brought a wet, clicking sound from deep inside his chest. Ribs broken. Right lung punctured. He blinked slowly, watching a single flake of violet ash settle on his dirty fingernail.Before him, the Ash Ravager was disintegrating. It had crushed him only moments ago, swatting him into the rocks like a nuisance before collapsing from its own wounds. Now, the towering mass of tempered scales and razor-spines was turning into shimmering violet dust. The ash didn't blow away in the toxic wind. It drifted toward Kaelen, clinging to the sweat on his neck, sinking into his skin. Specifically, it pulled toward the black brand at the base of his spine.Heat flared. It wasn't a slow build. It was a sudden, white-hot spike of pure agony.Kaelen retched, bringing up thick black bile that spattered over the gray dirt. He wiped his
Chapter 2: Shadow over Eldermire
Kaelen Thorne stood in the mud, staring at his hands.He tried to curl his fingers into a fist, but his joints felt stiff, protesting the sudden lack of chronic fatigue. For three years, starvation had lived in his belly like a coiled snake. Now, that snake was dead, replaced by a dense, freezing weight that anchored him to the earth.The air tasted like dirty copper and burnt hair. Sickly violet rain drifted down in a steady drizzle, carrying flakes of abrasive Aether ash that clung to his wet skin. He coughed, a dry, rattling sound that scraped the back of his throat. He wiped his mouth with the back of his sleeve, leaving a smear of dark mud across his jaw. His arm trembled slightly, the adrenaline of the kill slowly seeping out of his muscles.Around his boots, the pride of the Solar Aegis Order lay in pieces.Five knights. Their silver armor, usually polished enough to blind the lower castes, was bent and torn. One helmet was crushed entirely inward, the metal warped around a sku
Chapter 3: The Echo Desert and the First Hunger
Ash coated the back of Kaelen's throat. He swallowed dry, trying to clear the taste of burnt thatch and scorched copper, but it clung to his tongue. He dragged his heavy boots through the stony dirt, each step pulling him further from the smoldering remains of Eldermire.He didn't look back. There was no point.The village was gone, reduced to embers and charred wood, along with the High Priest of the Solar Aegis Order. Kaelen pulled his collar up against the biting wind. His jaw ached from clenching it. Whenever he blinked, the faces of the villagers flashed behind his eyelids. Not their faces before the fire, but after.He remembered the miller's daughter. She used to leave crushed dandelions on his stoop. When the Aegis knights had cornered her, Kaelen had stepped into the holy fire, taking the searing, blinding light across his own back to shield her. But when the light faded and the knights lay broken in the dirt, she hadn't thanked him. She had scrambled backward, kicking up dus
Chapter 4 Traces of Acid and Blood
Kaelen stopped walking. He leaned his shoulder against a fractured stone pillar, ignoring the way the rough surface snagged his shirt, and unlaced his left boot. He tipped it over. A handful of crystalline dust spilled out, catching the pale violet light of the sky before settling into the dirt. He knocked the heel against the pillar to clear the rest, slid his foot back in, and tied the laces tightly. The Wasteland of Echoes offered nothing but silence and sharp edges. The ground was composed of shattered Aether-glass that ground down into a fine, abrasive powder underfoot. It got into his clothes, his hair, the corners of his eyes.He wiped a layer of the grit from his forehead with the back of his hand. His knuckles were bruised, the skin split and crusted with dried blood. The black veins threading beneath his wrists pulsed with a slow, heavy thrum. He stared at his hands for a long moment. He tried to pick at a flake of dark blood under his thumbnail, but his fingers were stiff.
Chapter 5 Prey Cloaked in Light
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
Chapter 6:
Shadow at the Foot of the Black Glass
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.
Chapter 7: The Web of the Weaver of Despair
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,
Chapter 8: Evolution on the Altar of Suffering
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
Chapter 9: The Truth Behind the Eclipse
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