The Aeon Below

the Aeon Below

Deep beneath the frozen ribs of the mountain lies the Cave of the Dead, where light dies and the air itself hums with mourning.

Those who enter rarely return sane...if they return at all.

Desperate to escape the relatives bleeding her dry, Dahlia joins an expedition into its depths, hoping to earn enough money to buy her freedom.

Instead, she reaches the cave's final chamber: a vast golden cathedral carved for forgotten gods, where a corpse stands vigil before a black monolith that thinks.

He calls himself Caelus.

Once a god, now fallen, Caelus has spent centuries bound as the barrier between the living world and the underworld.

When Dahlia accidentally touches the Black Salt Stone that anchors him to his prison, she forges a tether between their minds.

Now his voice follows her everywhere...ancient, mocking, impossible to silence.

For the first time in hundreds of years, Caelus is no longer alone.

For the first time in Dahlia's life, someone listens.

But Caelus's interest in her isn't kindness.

To awaken the body preserved beneath the mountain and break free of his prison, he must consume the soul of the woman bound to him.

Dahlia should be nothing more than a means to an end. Yet her stubborn humor, relentless greed, and refusal to yield begin to unravel something within him...something dangerously close to humanity.

As the dead whisper through the labyrinth below and ancient truths claw their way to the surface, Dahlia faces an impossible choice: trust the god destined to devour her, or destroy the only being who has ever truly understood her.

After all, the most dangerous thing in the Cave of the Dead isn't what waits in the darkness.

It's the voice that knows exactly how to reach her heart.

~~~🦋

Early draft, being revised for publication elsewhere.