God Grave

‎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 swallow the morning sun. Tharos's ribcage. The god had been dead three hundred years, but the corpse still hummed—a frequency most people couldn't hear. Kael could. He'd been able to since the collapse, since the dust got into his blood and changed something fundamental.

‎He hated it.

‎"Kael! Wait up!"

‎He didn't slow. Behind him, Joren stumbled through the scrub, breathing hard. The older man had been drinking again—Kael could tell from the way he moved, too careful, overcompensating.

‎"We're going to miss the caravan," Kael called.

‎"No we won't."

‎"We will if you keep dragging your feet. I told you you’d had too much to drink yesterday.”

“Slow down. Please”

‎Kael stopped and turned. Joren caught up, bent double, hands on his knees. At twenty-seven he looked forty—too many years in imperial service, too many things he wouldn't talk about. The left side of his neck was bandaged, always bandaged, hiding the god-corruption that was eating him alive one inch at a time.

‎"You alright?" Kael asked.

‎"Fantastic. Never better. Why?"

‎"You're sweating."

‎"It's a desert."

‎"It's dawn. And cold."

‎Joren straightened, wiped his face with his sleeve. For a moment something flickered behind his eyes—pain, maybe, or fear—but he grinned it away. "You worried about me, kid?"

‎"No."

‎"Liar."

‎Kael turned back toward the Ribs. The caravan camp was visible now, a scatter of canvas and cookfire smoke against the bone. Twelve wagons, forty people, all of them trying to cross the Lorn Expanse before the memory-storms hit. They'd hired Kael as a guide because he could sense when a storm was building, could feel the resonance shift in the god-bones before the sky turned red.

‎They didn't know why he could do that. He'd made sure of it.

‎"Think they'll actually pay us?" Joren asked.

‎"If we get them across alive."

‎"And if we don't?"

‎"Then payment won't matter much."

‎Joren laughed—rough, sharp, the kind of sound that wasn't really amusement. "I like your optimism."

‎They walked in silence after that, boots crunching through salt-crust and fossilized bone fragments. The deeper into the Expanse you went, the more of Tharos you found—vertebrae the size of houses, finger bones like fallen towers, ribs that curved overhead and cast shadows that never quite aligned with the sun.

‎The empire mined it all. Shipped god-bone back to the Spine cities, rendered it down in forges, used it to build engines and weapons and the framework of their perfect ordered world. The process left dust. The dust left marks.

‎Kael had spent his childhood breathing it in.

‎Don't think about that. Don't think about the collapse. Don't think about—

‎The hum changed.

‎He stopped walking.

‎"Kael?"

‎The resonance in the bones had shifted—still faint, still distant, but wrong. Like a string pulled slightly out of tune. He closed his eyes, tried to isolate the feeling. It was coming from the south. Deep south, past the caravan route, past the mining camps, out where the Ribs tapered into the sternum and the real corpse began.

‎"Kael, what is it?"

‎He opened his eyes. "Something's wrong."

‎"Wrong how?"

‎"I don't know yet."

‎Joren's hand dropped to the knife at his belt—old reflex, military training. "Storm?"

‎"No. Different."

‎"Different bad or different interesting?"

‎Kael looked at him. "In my experience, there's no difference."

‎The caravan master was a woman named Tessa Vrome—short, scarred, with the kind of voice that carried across fifty yards of wind. She was arguing with her second-in-command when Kael and Joren arrived, something about water rations and whether they could risk a faster pace.

‎She saw Kael and stopped mid-sentence. "Tell me something good."

‎"Route's clear," Kael said. "No storms for at least two days."

‎"At least?"

‎"I'm not a priest. I can't predict the future."

‎Tessa grunted. "Can you predict whether we'll hit a sinkhole?"

‎"No."

‎"Then what exactly am I paying you for?"

‎"To not die horribly in a memory-storm."

‎She stared at him for a long moment, then barked a laugh. "Fair enough. We move in an hour. Stay close to the lead wagon."

‎Kael nodded and turned to go, but Tessa caught his arm. Her grip was strong, calloused. "That thing you do," she said quietly. "The listening. You learned that in the mines?"

‎He didn't answer.

‎"My cousin worked Lorn Deep-18," Tessa continued. "Said there were kids down there who could hear the bones sing. Said the empire took them away."

‎"Your cousin talk a lot?"

‎"He's dead."

‎Kael pulled his arm free. "Then he's got nothing to worry about."

‎He walked away before she could respond. Joren followed, silent for once.

‎They were two hours into the march when Kael felt it again—that wrongness in the resonance, clearer now, closer. He slowed, scanning the horizon. Nothing. Just salt and bone and heat shimmer.

‎But the hum was louder.

‎"Joren."

‎"I know. I feel it too."

‎Kael glanced at him sharply. "You can—?"

‎"Not like you. But something's off. The air's too still."

‎He was right. The wind had died completely. In the Expanse, and that was never a good sign.

‎Kael moved up to the lead wagon, where Tessa rode shotgun beside the driver. "We need to stop."

‎"We just started."

‎"I know. Stop anyway."

‎Tessa looked at him, then at the sky, then back at him. Whatever she saw in his face made her decision. "Hold!" she shouted. "Full stop! Circle formation!"

‎The caravan shuddered to a halt. Drivers called out, wagons creaked, but within minutes they'd formed a defensive ring—standard procedure for the Expanse, where threats could come from any direction.

‎Kael stood in the center of the circle, eyes closed, listening.

‎The resonance was changing. Not a storm—storms built slowly, like pressure behind your eyes. This was sharp. Sudden. Like something had woken up.

‎"Kael," Joren said quietly. "South. Look south."

‎He opened his eyes.

‎On the horizon, maybe two miles out, the air was bending. Not heat shimmer—this was wrong, geometric, like reality was folding in on itself. And in the center of the distortion, something was moving.

‎"Gods' graves," someone whispered.

‎"The gods are dead," Tessa snapped. "Stay calm. Weapons ready."

‎But Kael couldn't look away from the distortion. Because now he could hear it—not just the resonance, but voices. Layered, overlapping, speaking in a language he shouldn't understand but somehow did.

‎The vessel approaches. The singer draws near. The cycle begins again.

‎His blood went cold.

‎"It's not coming for us," he said.

‎Tessa turned to him. "What?"

‎"Whatever that is—it's not coming for the caravan. It's going somewhere else."

‎"Where?"

‎Kael's throat was dry. "The Spine. It's heading for the Spine."

‎And then, cutting through the morning heat like a blade, he heard it—her. A voice, clear and impossible, singing a melody that shouldn't exist. The resonance in every bone fragment around them shivered.

‎Joren grabbed his shoulder. "Kael, your nose."

‎He touched his face. His fingers came away red.

‎The singing was getting louder.