2026-01-10 05:21:25
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The weight of the Past
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
Confessions pt 3
"I had a sister," he said finally, the words coming without conscious decision. "Younger. Living in the coastal cities, if she's still alive. I haven't seen her in three years.""Why not?""Because deserters can't exactly visit family without imperial agents showing up." He touched his corrupted neck, feeling the black veins pulse beneath his fingertips. "And because I didn't want her seeing me like this. Better she thinks I died in service than knowing I'm rotting slowly in the Expanse.""Does she know what you did? What happened in that chamber?""No. I never told her about the missions, the operations. I only sent letters saying I was doing well, rising through ranks, making the family proud." Joren smiled bitterly. "She thought I was a hero, a proper imperial soldier protecting the empire from threats. She wrote back telling me about her studies—she's training to be a physician—about how she wanted to work in the outer territories helping people who couldn't afford expensive
Confessions pt 2
"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
Confessions pt 1
Joren couldn't sleep. The corruption always got worse at night, pulsing, spreading, reminding him that each waking moment he spent brought him inches away from death.He sat watch beside the cold fire pit, checking the perimeter more from habit than necessity. Nothing moved in the salt flats except bone-crawlers hunting in the dark. Their carapaces caught starlight, gleaming like mother-of-pearl as they skittered across a vertebrae half-buried in sediment.Military training died hard. Even now, three years after desertion, and two years into corruption, he still checked sight lines and approach vectors, positioning himself where he could see threats before they saw him —old habits from a life he'd left behind, or tried to."Joren?" A hesitant voice came from the darkness. Petran emerged from between the wagons, moving with the careful quiet of someone trying not to wake others. "I didn't mean to startle you."Joren's hand had already moved to his knife before he registered who it
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
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
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