by vael draven
I am not a necromancer. I do not summon armies of the dead. I build—three constructs at most, each one a work of surgical precision. My name is Valen, and I am the last living master of Micro-Suture Necromancy. Twenty-three days ago, I walked out of a burning city. I left behind the Academy, the sacrifice array, and everything I once was. Now I carry a transformation in my blood that I do not fully understand. My left eye is a draconic vertical pupil. My left arm is slowly dying—or slowly becoming something else. I have eight to ten weeks before systemic organ failure, unless I find a better inhibitor. I am not running anymore. I am hunting. The Free Federation is a lawless frontier ruled by warlords, merchants, and things older than both. Its cracked earth bleeds abyssal energy through rifts that were never meant to open. Someone is breaking the ancient seals that keep the deep things buried—and they are using techniques that look disturbingly like my own. The Iron-Tusk Legion wants to control all abyssal materials. The hunters who track me believe I am a rogue researcher. Sera, the only person I might call an ally, has a past she has not fully disclosed. I have three constructs. I have a scalpel. I have questions that will not let me rest. Who is coordinating the continent-wide death-energy network? Why are the seals failing? And who was the first suture-master—the one whose methods I seem to have reinvented from scratch? The dead are safer than the living. But the living have answers. The Morgue Engineer’s Grimoire: Stitch the Beast is the second volume of a dark progression fantasy series, continuing the story of a methodical, deadpan surgeon whose relentless pursuit of knowledge pulls him deeper into a war older than empires. Precision is his power. Transformation is his curse. And the abyss is just another puzzle waiting to be solved.
