ASHES BENEATH THE SKY

The world didn’t end. It opened. Twelve years ago, the ground split apart without warning, swallowing cities whole and exposing a vast, living underworld beneath the surface. From those depths came the Buried—unnatural beings that move like humans, think like predators, and speak in voices that shouldn’t exist anymore. Humanity survived—but barely. Now, what remains clings to towering fortress-cities known as Spines, built upward to escape a world that is no longer safe below. Elias Varn has spent years watching the Hollows—the massive fractures that scar the land—trying to understand what lies beneath them. He’s not the strongest soldier. Not the fastest. But he listens. And sometimes… Something answers back. When a new type of Buried appears—one that can imitate human behavior and whisper the names of the dead—Elias is chosen to lead a small squad into the depths for the first time. Their mission is simple: Descend.Observe.Return. But nothing beneath the surface follows human rules. The deeper they go, the less the Hollows resemble tunnels—and the more they resemble something constructed. Vast, shifting structures stretch below the world, filled with remnants of people who should be long gone… yet somehow aren’t. And the Buried? They aren’t just hunting. They’re learning. They’re remembering. And they’re building something that requires human voices to complete it. As Elias begins to hear a voice he recognizes—his brother, long believed dead—he’s forced to confront a truth more terrifying than extinction: The enemy isn’t just beneath them. It may be made from them. Caught between survival and the unbearable possibility of what still lives below, Elias and his squad must decide: Do they destroy what’s growing in the dark… Or risk everything to understand it?