by Kraheed
The tides rise higher every Red Moon year. In the drowned industrial city of Godfall Harbor, the dead are pulled daily from flooded canals, collapsed descent shafts, and the black waters beneath the bridges. Vaelor Draith has spent most of his life among them, working the deep retrieval lines beneath the harbor where men vanish without explanation and ancient tunnels disappear into the abyss below the world. He survives quietly.Keeps his head down.And carries a fractured crimson lantern that once belonged to his mother during the last Black Eclipse. But when a corpse from the legendary Ninth Descent resurfaces after eleven years with its lantern still burning, everything changes. Because the dead man speaks. Far beneath civilization lies the Garden Below, a colossal labyrinth of drowned ruins, fossilized kingdoms, underground oceans, and ancient remains large enough to resemble mountains. Humanity has spent centuries descending into its depths searching for resources, forgotten knowledge, and the truth behind the Thrones — enormous eldritch beings whose remains shaped the foundations of the world itself. Most never return. Those who do often come back changed. As another Red Moon approaches and panic spreads through Godfall Harbor, Vaelor is dragged into the Black Lantern Penal Corps, a brutal descent organization built from condemned soldiers, debtors, criminals, and expendable survivors sent into the deep to recover what humanity cannot survive without. Below the world, abandoned expedition routes rot in darkness.Ancient things move beneath the stone.And somewhere in the abyss, the surviving members of the Ninth Descent are still waiting. In a world slowly drowning beneath red skies and endless rain, survival alone may be enough to turn a man into something unrecognizable.
