Can you tell us a little about yourself?
I’m interested in the interference patterns produced when high and low culture meet. The Cwej series is a tie-in bobbing on the outermost fringes of a TV franchise; tie-in relates to genre fiction as genre relates to literary fiction, another rung down in how seriously it’s taken. What I keep wondering is, can you do for tie-in what Delany or Ballard did for genre? How would a Banville or an Updike approach this universe? Even a Ligotti, a Flann O’Brien? What happens when a book is equally in dialogue with Dante Alighieri and Terrance Dicks? There’s my mental corkboard of red threads; you judge.

What was your introduction to the Doctor Who universe?
A dim 2005 memory: a newspaper with Eccleston in a leather jacket, and me wondering what I was looking at—“some English thing”. A slightly clearer one: turning on the television, I glimpsed Ardal O’Hanlon as a cat and reflexively changed the channel. Not till I one day watched Time Crash on YouTube did I begin to “get it”. The first real episodes I saw were The Girl in the Fireplace and The Snowmen, but I’m glad I pushed through to discover the classics. I see the essential Doctor Who story (“essential” in the metaphysical sense) as Meglos.

What is your take on the character of Chris Cwej?
Like Stephen from Penda’s Fen, he is a warred-over vehicle and conduit for things greater than himself. In gaining obliquity to the corporate core of things (i.e. the Doctor), he’s paradoxically become someone to whom far wilder things can happen. A bit like an asteroid that's veered off into lawless interplanetary waters, making it a perfect place for questionable science experiments—which brings me to my story in Springs Eternal.

What makes your Cwej story unique?
Roz Forrester, Cwej's old police partner and closest friend, is dead. In fact, that’s one of the main things readers remember about her; she was killed off in a very affecting novel, So Vile a Sin, written by the great Ben Aaronovitch and Kate Orman. Since then Cwej has endured unimaginable transformations, but that loss was what kicked off his trajectory. The question has loomed over the Cwej series: what would Forrester say if she could see the man he’s become? My story tackles that, in a manner I would be very surprised if anyone guessed. I won’t give the details away, but I will say that there’s no time-travel here, no parallel universes. This isn’t a young Forrester from the past, or an alternative timeline. She is alive, in the present of the narrative, and her death in So Vile a Sin remains the heart of it all.

Would you like to mention any influences or inspirations?
The setting was inspired by the novel Jack Glass by the illustrious Adam Roberts. When I delivered my story half a decade ago (!), I had no idea I’d end up co-editing the whole four-volume Seasons project, much less that I’d have the neck to ask him for a story. Adam’s earlier novella The Imperial Army—a darkly humorous tale of boyish innocence and galactic-imperial military cloning, which I read in his collection Adam Robots—always struck me as a kind of ur-Cwej story, and was a touchstone for my work on the series from The Ursine Brood onwards, so this was a great full-circle moment. My story in Springs Eternal was also influenced by a particular Jean-Pierre Jeunet film, but naming it might reveal too much.

Did you face any interesting challenges in the course of writing?
I’ll put this cagily, but in early drafts, a certain group of beings who play a major offstage role in the plot were stated to have a different identity. That had to change when a licensing agreement fell through. It took me a while to rejig things, but in the process, we alighted on a new mystery, which became a key subplot rippling throughout these four volumes. Seasons grew more self-contained, more stand-alone, and it’s stronger for it.

What’s your next creative project, and is there anywhere readers can follow you?
I’ve written my final Cwej story, which will be out after Seasons, and I’m satisfied that I’ve scraped the outermost limits of what I can do within this sort of setting. Time to get a move on. I’ve also completed another novel, a kind of experimental Hibernian response to a certain H.G. Wells text, which has neared publication at a couple of presses but remains the bridesmaid. My tiny anchorite Twitter account is @this_regard.

​

These days, family dinner night actually felt like time spent with family. 
Many startling changes had come to the Lungbarrovians’ lives since Kinkeeper Innocet had put an end to the years they’d spent wandering the foothills of Mount Lung and yearning for the Promised House; yet, even now, that simple fact was perhaps still the most shocking. Family. Children crowded the meal cavern, chasing each other around, under, and sometimes onto the vast central table; only Jobiska complained, while the others simply laughed. 
Cousin Rynde now had a hundred mouths to feed, and he’d risen to the task with gusto; his ingredients were as humble as ever, mushrooms and grains and questionable meats, but rather fresher and more abundant than in their years of sequestration—and Rynde gave them freely. At mealtimes, his hissing, bubbling symphony of freshly-opened pans, of newly-ladled soups and stews would echo through the low-lit neon den, mixing with the layered chorus of shouts and murmur, the idle conversation of the Cousins and Second Cousins. There had been enemies among them, and bitter rivals, but all that had faded now, with freedom and the need for survival. They’d lost their House, but found a home with one another.
Or so it was, at any rate, with most of them. 
“I still think we should take this outrage up with the High President! …Again! We are Lungbarrow—the Children of Plutarch—old of blood, ancient in tradition—”
And senescent of form, someone thought so loudly it was audible. Cousin Xephresa, once a respected stellar astrophysician, was still clinging to a body he’d been wearing since before the House’s burial, and it fit his calcified attitudes. 
“Why should we be reduced to squabbling squatters!?” he thundered on. “Little better than Outsiders are we here! We have emerged. We are free! We should be Home, in a Chapterhouse befitting our status—not scrabbling in dirt and living off mushrooms as if nothing ever changed!”
In the midst of such much new life, the old relic’s posturing was a sharp reminder of the past. Yet even he, even bitter old Xephresa, the great traditionalist, loved the children. All through his tantrum, one of Owis’ children had been playing with fistfuls of his long white hair.  
“What was it like,” she asked him, cocking her head to one side — “the old House?”
“Oh, well I—” the old man stammered. “I—well—”
“Oh! Oh!”  the girl’s brother piped up. “Second Cousin Vesperell, he could tell us! He has the best stories!”
A few seats down, Kinkeeper Innocet stiffened. “Now Uphon, Cousin Vesperell is very tired. I’m sure he’d be happy to tell you in the morning—”
A decrepit man with a shaggy brown beard raised his head from his food. “No, no, Kinkeeper. Let him ask. I understand his desire to know… Dash it, he ought to know, they all should. They should know why we can never go back.”
Instantly, a pair of advisors closed in on Vesperell from either side. The first was tall, a woman, with long, wildly curled black hair. She’d been sitting close to the chronicler already, for Incandeline was like a younger sister to the old man, but now she leaned in closer, hissing words of warning directly into his mind — for Incandeline, in all her lives, had but rarely spoken with her mouth, letting her thoughts do the work. More demonstrative was the second cautioner, Cousin DeRoosifa, who adjusted his thick, bottle-bottom spectacles and then spoke up in his booming, sonorous voice.
“My dear Vesperell, surely you cannot think of taxing yourself so! Why, any story of our joint youths is bound to invoke… well… well, you know…” 
He trailed off, letting his gaze fall on one of the empty seats around the table. It’s Arkhew’s chair, installed at Innocet’s request along with one for every other departed Cousin — even Glospin had been given one. A rare concession to the grief which she had once borne so manifestly upon her back, now turned inward as her other responsibilities called. 
It was well known that Arkhew, DeRoosifa, Vesperell, and Incandeline had been something of a tight-knit group in the old days, exchanging favours and secrets in forgotten corners of the ancient Chapterhouse even after the burial of House Lungbarrow; that was, until they had all trailed off into the calling dark of the House, leaving only Arkhew behind at the mercy of Owis and Glospin. The death of the shy little man had hit the other three hard; harder than most deaths would have in such a bickering, distrustful family.
Nonetheless, Vesperell shook off the pair and their objections. 
“I appreciate your concern, Cousins. But I have a story which must be told… a small story, so as to not spoil our appetites. I call it — ‘A Feast at House Lungbarrow’.”
* * *
Thousands of years ago and many miles away, the feast hall of Lungbarrow was all but dead. Oh, to be sure, there were people in it—but the silence that hung over it was like that of the grave. Instead of Cousin Rynde, the great wooden Drudges served the food, their ancient limbs snapping with each bend towards the high table top. No lively conversation was to be had here, just the deadened glares and muttered accusations of a spiteful family ill-accustomed to gathering in one place. Few came to the Chapterhouse with any regularity anymore, but it was a special occasion—the Feast of Thremix the Liberator, and the two hundred and fiftieth anniversary of Cousin Vesperell’s publication of the wildly successful three hundred volume biography of the self-same figure—one of Lungbarrow’s few success stories in recent memory.
It was this notion of a ‘success story’ for the modern House being the biography that suddenly caused Kithriarch Quences, after hours of silence beside the ever-watchful Satthralope,  to stand up upon his oversized seat, glaring accusatorily at the young chronicler.
“So, we have our feast here today in honour of you? In honour of this… mediocrity?”
Vesperell blinked in surprise, a smile falling from his face. He had been rather handsome then; a short brown beard and wavy, well-sculpted hair complimenting his persona of the dashing young storyteller, master of the ancient lore of their world. Beside him, Incandeline—then a shockingly tall and gaunt man with a long, thin face broken in its pale monotony only by a dimple under one eye—laid his hand on his Cousin’s shoulder, cautioning against rising to the old man’s spleen.
Vesperell did not heed him. “Why, Ordinal-General, is it not good to have a success story of any sort to our name? My biography of Thremix is celebrated in the halls of even the very hoariest Chapterhouses, it—”
“Success?! You call that success?!” spat Quences. “Why, I suppose you’d call all of your little scheming quartet of Cousins here successes too then, hm? Success indeed—a biography of Thremix, of all things! Not one of the Architect, nor even the Engineer—no, for, recall, your efforts there came to nothing. So you cling to a biography of a half-wit scientist, least of our Founders, gathering us all here to celebrate your boastful nothingness!”
DeRoosifa raised a hand, almost as a scared child might to a teacher scolding their friend, his bald head beaded with sweat that trickled down to stain his omnipresent spectacles.
Quences rounded on him, his palms flat on the table, blue eyes hard as diamonds in his gaunt face. “Ah, and you, dear Cousin DeRoosifa, always with the speeches, quick to the defence! When you told me, my boy, that you wished to go into politics, I thought—at last, here is one who can fulfill our potential! But where did you end up? A lawyer. Politician indeed! And you, Incandeline, what of you? A Junior Chronogeneticist in the Bureau of De-Extinction, spending all your time poking around with that idiotic little yellow-liveried taxonomist! Not even a hint of ambition, as your fellow conspirators possess.”
All three of the previous victims of his rant flinched as Quences at last came to Arkhew—poor, quiet, unassuming Arkhew.
“Ah, and finally, Arkhew… you wish to be a cloud-sculptor. I have nothing else to say. What could I say to such disappointment?”
The small, brunette-bobbed woman—as Arkhew had been then—bowed her head, no resistance in sight.
Quences sat back in his chair, huffing and daubing his forehead with a handkerchief. He looked almost apologetic for a moment, his eyes softening to pools of clear water. 
“Ah, but I should not berate you… there are two of your kin who will give us our hopes now! They have enough ambition for all of you; why, they did not even come here tonight, so great are their callings elsewhere! One is growing closer to the organs of power all the time, the other stays studying… such unusual things, but so brilliantly! Fear not, all of you… your promise may be wasted, but you shall live to see it fulfilled in others… I promise you, my dears… yes…”
Muttering, Quences withdrew once again into his ancient senescence. 
The four he had accosted remained in silence. What could be said? Quences did not care for them—he never would. Only whichever great hope he clung to for a few centuries was ever on his mind; they were not a family here, merely obligations he put up with. 

Innocet dressed quickly, shivering in the badly insulated room. During this time of year, she slept with her family in the loft of an ancient thatched barn, on a bed that had first been built centuries ago by a long-lost Cousin. He used to sneak away from the House when the other Cousins had been cruel to him, or when Satthralope had rebuked him with particular viciousness. Innocet ached for those simpler days, when there was nothing more fearful in life than a harsh scolding.
As she buttoned her blouse and moved away from the bed, her hair trailed after her in two long, ragged brown and grey plaits. For the first years after her family’s escape from Lungbarrow, she had kept her hair short. But no matter how long Innocet spent badgering the clerks and secretaries who surrounded the Lady President, the promised restoration of her House had never come. And then war descended upon the universe, and Innocet was thrown out of the halls of governance along with her pleas. Her family were nomads now, living sometimes in the sheds and stables that used to be part of Lungbarrow’s estate, sometimes in a small underground village with other outcasts.
So once again Innocet wore her shame for all to see. In the Wildlands, it wasn’t safe to burden herself with a heavy coil weighing down her shoulders. Instead she crossed the braids over her back and wrapped them around her body until they bound her from chest to hips like a corset. The hair kept her warm in the chill morning air; it supported her aching back; and its tightness against her ribs reminded her of her failures with every breath.
Even after all these centuries, she hung the useless keys of Lungbarrow at her waist like a ring of strangely-shaped daggers. Talismans of hope, or more reminders of her failure? She didn’t let herself think too closely on it. She fastened her cloak and climbed quietly down the ladder. 
Owis and Jobiska were already awake. A small fire burned in the central pit, and the two men sat in lifeless wooden chairs beside the flames, eating leftover pig-rat and nill-grain porridge. Owis looked up from under his fringe of greying hair, then looked down again and kept shovelling porridge into his mouth. Jobiska gestured Innocet to join them.
She sat beside Jobiska, and he smiled at her. She attempted to smile back. She remembered when she and Jobiska were young together. Jobiska’s previous body, an ancient, fragile husk, had failed the same day Lungbarrow fell: like Innocet, he had emerged from their long imprisonment with a new form. They had shared so much hope in those early years. But now both of them were growing old again, and they remained Houseless.
“Porridge?” asked Owis cheerfully. He, of all the Cousins, had adapted best to this drab existence. He had never known anything but scrounging and hunting; the mere fact that he now did his foraging in clean sunlight instead of mildewed darkness was enough to make him happy.
Innocet nodded, and Jobiska handed her a bowl and a wooden spoon. Owis served her from the pot warming over the fire. Innocet held back a grimace as she dug into the bland breakfast. She reminded herself that it was better than raw tafelshrew meat and slimy mushrooms. These days, they had fruit and vegetables from the garden, grain from the small fields they had managed to cultivate, and fresh meat from the hunters who passed through. They had sunlight and fresh air and freedom. They even had children, young Outsiders who had joined their family.
But they had no House, no Kithriarch, no legal status in society, no life in any meaningful sense of the word. Owis and a few others had embraced their new circumstances, but the rest were just fading away gradually, spending centuries dying. And it was Innocet’s fault.
The porridge stuck in her throat. She swallowed with difficulty and set aside her bowl. Owis gave her a glance to confirm that she was finished before picking up the bowl. Innocet almost smiled. Her youngest cousin still had an insatiable appetite.
“Any news of Luton?” asked Innocet.
“Nothing,” said Jobiska.
She looked to Owis: he had developed a knack for talking with the true Wildlanders, the leather-clad tribes who had never set foot in House or City. Sometimes they shared news with him. But this time, he only scraped up the last of Innocet’s porridge and shook his shaggy grey-streaked head.
So, Luton was gone. Innocet had known it, of course. But she had refused to count him among the missing until a full year had passed without word of his fate. She tried to convince herself he was still alive somewhere. He’d most likely just grown tired of scraping out this meagre living. He wasn’t the first.
She rose with a bitter lump in her throat and left the barn-turned-house, pulling her cloak tight against the chill wind. The first sun stood thirty degrees high and the second glowed faintly below the horizon. The last vegetables waited for harvest in the frost-touched garden. Innocet picked up a machete from beside the door and turned her face into the wind.
Behind her on the far side of the barn were the grain fields, a primitive outhouse, and a path leading toward the underground village where her family took refuge from the summer heat. But on this side, there was only wilderness. More than a thousand years ago, the chaotic growth had been an orchard, and plenty of fruit trees still grew wild. But except once a year when the magentas ripened, nobody but Innocet ventured in this direction.
She had forbidden her Cousins from going near the ruins of Lungbarrow. They didn’t know she regularly broke her own edict. Her knees ached with every step, but she was still strong enough to hack her way through the brush and vines. Her previous body had aged into a pallid, fragile thing; but this time, the hardships of life in the Wildlands had turned her wiry and tough. Her hand on the hilt of the machete looked like old leather stretched over the knotted cords of knuckles and tendons.
She broke through the underbrush onto the scarred patch of bare earth and stone at the edge of the cliff. Nothing grew where Lungbarrow once stood. Innocet hated coming here. But if she tried to stay away, she started feeling cold grasping fingers in the pit of her stomachs and sepulchral whispers in the back of her mind. Sooner or later, she always came back.
Innocet clipped her machete to one of the braids around her waist, then moved to the middle of the barren space. The wind fluttered her cloak. Time had smoothed away most of the furrows and gouges in the ground, but a few particularly deep ditches still led to the edge of the cliff, like the marks of enormous claws scraping through the dirt before losing their grip. Innocet suspected that if anyone dared to excavate this site, they would find a trail of shingles and broken glass and shattered teacups leading over the edge of the precipice.
She didn’t go near the edge. She’d seen the view often enough. Far below, in a crevasse that had opened to swallow the falling House, lay the ruins of Lungbarrow. It was nothing but a crushed and crumbling pile of whitewood and blankstone jammed into a crack in the ground. But it still whispered deep in the recesses of her mind, a centuries-long fading moan as it died.
As the great building had taken centuries to grow to its intended size and reach full awareness, so it took centuries to crumble under its dying weight and fade from sapience. Every time Innocet ventured here, she felt Lungbarrow’s drawn-out death rattle breathing coldly upward from its crevasse. Every time she stood atop the cliff, she felt the anguish and hatred of the House’s suicide rising to claw against her mind.
She had inherited the role of Housekeeper, though Lungbarrow had already been too far gone to bond with her. Her family had taken to calling her Kinkeeper instead, but the title was meaningless. In her hearts, she was a Housekeeper. She still owed the near-dead House… something. She didn’t know what.
“Please,” Innocet whispered into the wind, “please just die.” She felt like a traitor saying those words. But as long as Lungbarrow had the faintest spark of life in its walls, Innocet couldn’t leave. She clenched her hand around the ring of keys and felt their jagged edges digging into her palm.
“Please!” she cried. “Just let it end!” Maybe when the House finally finished dying, its Cousins would die with it. Or maybe when the House’s final breath drew to its end, they would be set free at last from its jealous grip on their lives. Maybe Lungbarrow’s Cousins would be able to move on.

Early in creative development, Cwej series editor Hunter O’Connell formulated a plan for Cwej: Seasons, being an anthology with the theme of passing time illustrated by the seasons of the year. Now, in 2026, Arcbeatle Press is proud to begin a quarterly release of Seasons, beginning with Springs Eternal. 

Edited by Hunter O’Connell and Gerard Power, best known for the Cwej stories The Lost Fictionaut and The Ursine Brood, Cwej: Seasons will be releasing each subsequent part seasonally throughout 2026. Each quarterly release will comprise five stories and one short vignette, with all four compiled in the collected Cwej: Seasons anthology releasing 2027.

“With each passing day I grow more grateful for the opportunities our readers have allowed us,” says Hunter O’Connell. “With the incredible drive of our talented creatives here at Arcbeatle, we’ve managed to make Seasons the best it can possibly be. It’s a true love letter to Chris and Roz as characters, and I know readers are excited to see Roz Forrester again after all this time! As to how she’s back, well, you’ll have to see…”

“Cwej: Seasons is a new, self-contained series that tells a complete story, with a very particular vision,” says Gerard Power. “Springs Eternal kicks off this saga with some shocking new developments for Chris Cwej and Roz Forrester, with consequences to ripple throughout these four volumes.”

The cover blurb for Cwej: Springs Eternal reads, “Cosmic soldier Christopher Cwej has spent his lives enforcing galactic justice.

Now his long-lost friend, Roz Forrester, has returned from the dead—but she’s no longer herself: no longer even human. Whose hands wrought this dark resurrection, and for what cosmic purpose? Can Cwej save the Universe again—this time from someone he loves?

With stories by BSFA Award winner Adam Roberts (The Thing Itself, Jack Glass), Sean Dillon (The Tower Through the Trees) and more.”

Cwej: Springs Eternal, the first part of Cwej: Seasons, will release May 21st, 2026 in ebook and paperback formats. A bold new cycle of sci-fi adventures begins.

Inquiries can be sent to [email protected]

​

Pre-Orders for the ebook edition are available now:

Amazon UK: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Cwej-Springs-Eternal-Part-Seasons-ebook/dp/B0H1LWQYF7
Amazon US: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0H1LWQYF7
Barnes and Noble: ​https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/cwej-gerard-power/1150158453

In the beginning, in the mists of time’s first wellspring; before reality and totality, there lived an old and foolish King. He was called Shadowsi Gone, and he ruled over a small AgriKingdom in the mountainous Dust Planes of the Sealess Country. His mind was bright and gifted; it roared with ideas like a candlenight furnace. He could craft great inventions, and engineer the most marvellous machines.
But like most rulers, he lacked kindness in his hearts. His days were spent locked away in the ancestral seat of his reign. From his obsidian balconies, old King Gone loomed in splendid isolation over the scraggly concrete dwellings and apartment huts of the lowly carving-folk in the desert below.
He liked it that way.
He refused to ever engage with the petty serfs that lived beneath his dark towers. Instead, he would control them by sending royal guards and ministers to enforce his countless demands.
 
His subjects lived to farm the expanses of Petrichor's Fields. They were called the Dust Carvers.
Their lives were spent mining tonnes of precious Dust, using their King's harvesting machines.
The fruits of their labour would be sold to merchants in the distant south, all to line their King’s endless pockets. The dejected peoples were exhausted by their King's nonstop orders. Their lives were wasted, their throats clogged with dust, and bones sore from lives toiling in the planes.
The Carvers’ only recompense was found in the communities they built, and the faith they shared.
As the Dust Carvers grew to truly hate their King, they instead sought their spiritual governance from the ancient spirits borne on the dust of their desires. They would be dutiful subjects to the Eternal Fates of the Thread. They pledged themselves to their deities, to the Ladies Tempos, Dolor, Thanatos and Vita.
Of all the Fates, the Goddess Vita was the Dust Carvers’ favourite.
Through time they learnt to keep their practices and soulful contentment hidden from their resentful King.
 
But it didn’t take long for the King to discover his people’s secret allegiances to the goddesses.
He was furious with their devotion to anything but his divine rule. King Gone spiralled further into his isolation from the rest of the kingdom. He spent every waking hour smoking his ceremonial pipe of lungwhick leaves, trying to enter the astral realms that the Fates occupied. He strained his mind with all his might to commune with the spirits that so overshadowed him.
Day after day he failed.
The Goddess Sisters were silent.
His hearts were too rotten, his mind rejected in judgement by those high and mighty entities.
His soul was locked away from their sightful unity.
Through the years that tumbled onwards, King Gone’s disdain for his subjects and their gods blossomed into a raging obsession.
They didn't harvest enough Dust for his royal economy, they didn't grow enough Magenta fruits for him to feast on, and worst of all, they continued to seek the wisdom and benefits of those accursed gods who'd cast his soul away.
Every night, while curled alone in his shining silver sleep-dial, he would curse the souls of Heaven, the most pernicious being the goddess Vita. She was the embodiment of fair chance and prevailing light.
Oh, how she inspired his people! How she instilled such devotion and unity amongst the carving-folks in a way he never could…
 
Despite his rotten hearts the King was a clever man.
He had spent his life studying ancient texts and relics of times swallowed by the entropy of the emerging universe. He was well-versed in the old legends: tales of the Once Lords, and fables of his Ancestral-Shadows who had long ago walked into this realm from a previous existence. The King knew the people of his world—and of those before—had long communed with spirits and omniversal voids rooted in the heart of his planet. In the shadows of his great castle he schemed and concocted his plan.
Shadowsi Gone ordered his guards to gather all the arcane ephemera that could guide him to the gods.
He spent countless days and nights pouring over scrolls and dusty puzzle-boxes, learning all he could about the mysterious lore of his planet.
From his arduous studies, he discovered he could attain the knowledge he sought from the ancient crones of the priorverse, general practitioners of the astral arts, who still inhabited their caves and monasteries dotted around the most desolate parts of the world. Those ceremonial Quack-Shrinks knew the gods from the days of old, and the King knew their professed wisdom could help him.
 
But he also knew they would not give such secrets away freely.
Breaking from his confinement within the grand towers over his AgriKingdom, King Gone embarked on his first trip to the wild corners of his wild territory. He rode atop his royal catafalque, drawn by his finest bred bearswine. The swine brayed, the King prayed, and they galloped off into the dark and the night.
A party of his finest soldiers marched in a circle around him, forming an advancing ring of warriors; all wielded swords, whilst they journeyed south towards the Tripeak Mountain.
By the first light of candledawn, they reached the lowest point of the mountain range. Twisted grey trees sprouted from little grassy outcrops on the lumbering slope. The King led his party through the tunnel of tangled branches, towards the little cave in the mountain they sought.
Arriving at the cave, the guards drew their swords, and the King stepped down to the cave’s mouth.
Inside an ancient crone sat waiting.
 
“What are you doing here?” she asked.
The King spoke, “Old Priestess Practioner, seer of the Fates, I seek your wisdom. You are more aged than the stars themselves, tell me what I must know. Tell me how I may meet the gods.”
The crone laughed and said, “I am not the one you seek, little man. To make deals with the gods, you must find the spirits of the broken homes. It is not my business to run errands for old fae. Not anymore. The souls you search for are locked far under this sacred mount. A long way from your prying snoopers.”
 
“And, what, pray tell, are these spirits of the broken homes?” asked the King, angered by the old woman's vulgar facetiousness. “I hope they don’t expect me to reimburse them.”
The witch grinned. “You seek the souls of old immortality. The spirits were of royal mind and matter once, just as you are now, my dear Shadowsi.”
The King bristled at the improper use of his forename, but the old one went on. “The fates grew wise to the spirits’ cruelty. Their palaces were split asunder. They abdicated their lordship of the Lost, and were locked away beneath the holy mountains, sealed in an inescapable box. Bound in wooden faith. They are buried at the core of the world. But only they can show you the way to the gods.”
“How will I reach these spirits, if they are trapped in the core? I shall drill through the world if that brings me to the gods’ attention!”
“You could do so, if that is your desire,” she said. “But it is your path. Your choice to make, dear King.”
But the King’s mind was already made.
 
On his two hundredth naming day, the King appeared to his people for the first time in decades.
He decreed that the machines he had devised for the harvesting of his country’s Dust would now be used to drill a mighty tunnel at the base of the holy mountain.
The Dust Carvers’ purpose would now be focused on digging a chasm into the centre of the world.
Centuries trickled through the King's fingers while he worked generations of his people to death.
 
Chiselling into the mountain, the Carvers worked endlessly. The King’s chasm grew deeper and deeper, getting closer to the centre of the planet year by year, decade by decade.
Families gruelled away to mine the core of the world. Parents passed their dusty burdens onto the children, the generational baton being handed down through the ages, as the hole grew deeper.
 
Even the King would sire heirs, conceived with the great-mother of flame, to hold the burden of his throne should he not return from his long-planned voyage.
By the time Shadowsi Gone had reached the grand old age of five hundred and seven, the chasm to the core had been carved. As wide as the hole of a water-well, its size betrayed the slogging centuries spent to dig it. It was just big enough to fit a single passenger. The King knew it would be a tight crawl down the infinite shaft.
 
Ready to take vengeance on his people and their faith, King Gone waited until the blackest night.
When dusk fell he was bathed and readied. His servers dressed him in his silk ruling gown, woven the moment of his birth. Finally, he was prepared for the descent to the core. A gathered party of his select remaining advisors and guards met with him in the cold night by the mountain. They drank bitter wine and sweet port, singing songs mocking the commonfolk below them. Soon the night faded to morning, and the time for his journey had come. Bidding his only loyal denizens farewell, he slowly crawled down into the abyss that seemed to stretch on for lightyears.
 
Gradually he plunged himself into the darkest of darkness. Days passed, as he shuffled down towards the heart of it all, until specks of light struggled in the receding murk to reach his eyes. The end of the tunnel looked as if it were a holy road onwards, and the King scrambled towards the gap, the taste of victory sour on his tongue.
Tumbling out of the tunnel, the King found himself in a vast misty chasm lit by abandoned torches—somehow still alit, and mysteriously abandoned. In the centre of the hollow cave he spotted an ornate carved box. It was a cube-shaped parcel sitting on a grand plinth. He knew it at once. It was a banshee trap: the final work of the Ancient Forgotten.
The King approached the box, drawing his ceremonial sword from the scabbard at his side.
“By my right as your Mountain King, I call upon the spirits that reside here. Speak to me!” said the King to the dark. “I seek your counsel. I wish to do away with the control of the accursed ones, I need to banish the influence of those fated sisters from my world.”
The whispers of spirits trapped in the rosewood parcel rang through his mind.
 
Their words cut deep to his bones. They said:
“All Spirits of the Broken Homes know the Souls of Heaven. We have fought them of old. Since Vita drew the first breath into this world. Since Tempos dropped her first speck of dust. Since Thanatos spilt her first blood. Since Dolor broke her first heart. Since Fortuna built her first path and Fabula told her first story. Together we danced in the time before the Ravaging of the Origin. We have seen into your hearts, and we know of your desires—oh little King. We’ve listened to your curses, and heard your lusts all your life. We’ve watched you grow into the Ruler you are now, ageing in your castle atop the Downfall Mound, under which your ancestors moulder. We’ve seen the family you sired; the descendants you abandoned, we shall have them too. Long shall they live. We agree to a bargain with you, little king.”
The spirits paused.
Shadowsi Gone stood still, waiting and hoping for the whispers to resume.
Sweat welled in his palm, causing his sword to slip from his clammy grip and clatter to the floor.
The spirits hissed.
Were they laughing? The King was defenceless, at the mercy of the voices that were seemingly everywhere and nowhere, and yet trapped in the wooden box.
The spirits spoke. “We will eke out your revenge on the sister you so hate. A twist in the fates and an eye for a heart, as were we tricked by them in the Once-Wars, at the birthing of this realm. If dear Sire agrees to our deal, we will forge a blood-pact to achieve your soul’s desire.”
He shouted back at the darkness. “What is my part in the bargain?”
“You will receive your wish. All knowledge will be yours to witness and devour. There will be no more secrets in this world. Vita’s spark will languish in due course, forgotten in our wooded tomb, locked away by the spell that once trapped us; we who once walked in the shadows where this orange world now spins. Before the fluctuations and recursions, before this loop began. But in order to seal Lady Vita away, you must gift us a sacrifice: your true heart.”
 
The King gasped as the simmering thoughts snaked into his mind. The tendril-whispers of the spirits tugged at his every thought, pushing him to their wanted answer, the answer he had sought in his heart. The watchful glare of the spirits burrowed deeper, becoming a mighty tree of life that sprouted through the cavernous subconscious realms. He let go, and agreed to the Spirits’ ultimatum.
The bargain was completed and signed, the contract drawn in blood as the spirits plucked out his heart and fled their box.
It was an invasion. An infinite camera was being shone into the dark places of the mind where the King, and all the other peoples in shadows, had locked away their ideal self, and closed off their innermost personhood from all others.
It was too much. Every soul that toiled in the world of shadows saw what he saw. The boundaries were torn asunder; the minds of all were open and exposed to the maddening crowd. There was no more privacy; no more self. It drowned his crumbling mind.
 
 
With the curse completed and the old debts paid, Lady Vita was speared in her astral realm and dragged to this buried culdesac of the material plane—swapped with the escaping sprites.
The King crumbled away into the dust he was composed from. Cast through purgatory, his foolish ghost was bound as a speck of brightness, charged to count and witness each one of Vita’s abandoned subjects. A recompense to the Goddess he’d usurped. But his wish did come true… life would change forever on his world, and secrets would be no more…
 
Sight burnt through the world like a forest on fire. In the cinders, all thoughts were one.
It was the panoptic Revelation, and it claimed all souls. The world grew cold and dark. It became a gallimaufry for every hope, hatred, and secret of every person that would ever tread in its rolling red shadows.
But the chorus of hope would forever be held under lock and key, guarded by the spirits in their new
Homes.
Changed by their shared affliction of sight, the people of the world were forever cursed to carry their
shame. They renamed themselves the Shadow People, and shared the title as their burden. A totem of the
loss of their individuality to the deafening unity of the homeward-bound crowd. There was no room for
loneliness; no time for privacy.
The remaining five goddesses withdrew their patronage from those whose dreams had filled the
hourglass of their lives. Every year on the anniversary of the King’s descent, the Fates would look through
the cracks and crevasses in the world. Using their eternal eye to observe the Shadow People as they
drudged through their lives of rituals, labour, and ceremonial battles.
Each year for a slogging millenia, the Fates were met with disappointment. The community and faithful
offerings from the days of the Dust Carvers grew further away.
 
In their deities’ absence the dark spirits found their homes in the hearths, kitchens, brick and
mortar that sheltered the cursed people. These were the ancient whispers of the devious ghosts, taking
back their old lodgings. Their bitter song mingled with the telepathic chorus of Those forever destined to
walk in Shadows.
 
The Shadow People learnt to fight amongst themselves. Their thoughts were one, and old grudges were shared freely across the generations. But no one knew unity.
From the ashes of the royal kingdoms and warring states, a new power arose in a phoenix flame of godsblood. The Court of Principles swept in, led by their anointed Pythia—a singular Witch who would privatise the gift of prophecy.
Her followers carried her to the cracked heart of Time City, where the First Pythia fed her sanity to her rejected gods in order to claim dominion over the mass of thoughts that entwined the souls of all the Shadow People.
Through the ages, the Pythia passed her titles and prophecies to her successors; the line perpetuated by her sisters in spirit— those gifted seers who could be trusted with the burden of holding all of time and space within their minds.
Over the course of true history, the line of oracles would grow to embody the planet itself,
becoming the living essence of the rock and dust, sky and bone of the world. Their order would bloom
into a vast empire across space, and they would inspire the songs and legends that heroes would sing with
them into battles against vampires and sphinxes. They would rule for generations upon generations, and
predicted their manifold order with the Fates would last forever. Yet little did their Pythic eye see the
true-future looming on the faraway horizon; to a childless time, where the harsh wind of logic rocks the
empty cradles.

“Ah, Lungbarrow!” cried the artist. “What a name… Lungbarrow, Lungbarrow, Lungbarrow! Such an exquisite sound!”
​
He repeated the word thrice more before Quences struck the checkerboard floor with his cane, and snapped:

“Silence, painter, and be at it! We do not pay you forty-five hundred coronets to chatter.”

The artist shrank. There was a hardness to the deep-set blue eyes and the gaunt, angled face; even the neatly-trimmed moustache, which might have looked avuncular in isolation, contributed a terse, military edge. The artist stared at that moustache, enticed by the thought of growing one just like it, until the old man arched an eyebrow; then he ducked behind the work-in-progress.

He was working, of course, in three dimensions—an intricate mechanism of spinning crystals surrounded the frame, generating space. But his would be no Ancestral Portrait, imbued with biodata; merely a vanity pursuit. 

All forty-five Cousins—a family portrait. Such things were rarely attempted. Oldbloods’ disinterest in artwork was one reason; but another, the artist now realised, was the difficulty involved in making two scores of Superiors stand together at close quarters without triggering a brawl. He had, of course, begun the work in his own Chapterhouse, filling the cellar with dummies dressed in borrowed fineries, but even so, reaching a consensus on the composition had been the work of years; every time he thought he had it, some loomling’s ego ached once more, and they would demand to be moved, or to be given grander clothing. One Lungbarrovian in grey-green robes had managed to gain a whole new body while he worked—thinner, in a wholly different style. 

Still, he relished this chance. Even on his eleventh body, he was a boy, with little glory to his name; only a few personal portraits here and there, some of people in this room. So he worked, silently, with renewed fervour—until at last, every Cousin, from Glospin to Vyrdlequith, had been perfectly captured in droplets of hovering paint, every angle a masterpiece of design. 

He announced his achievement, and, with sudden violence, they broke from their poses, swarming around him, rushing to preen and criticise. 

“—not bad—”

“—Cantobel, one can hardly see me—”

“—hardly my fault, Arkhew—”

“—captured my chin—”

Finally Quences parted the crowd, an old woman behind him. Kithriarch and Housekeeper exchanged glances, then pivoted mechanically to face the anxious artist. Satthralope nodded, once, stiff as clockwork.

“It will do,” she declared. 

There was a moment of silence; then the artist remembered to breathe, and reached down to unclasp the ornate wooden frame from the mechanism, locking the image into shape as the surface hardened into glass. With swelling pride, he handed it to the crone, who accepted it in the manner of a sacrament, and shuffled away to find a place to hang it. One by one, the Cousins followed in her wake, until only Quences was left. 

The artist tugged at the lapels of his crimson vestment.

“…Well!” he blurted out at last, “I’m honoured to have been of service, Ordinal-General.”

“Mmh… Serviceable, yes,” Quences grunted absently; he was staring at his distorted reflection on the hull of the crystal machine, with an air of melancholy.

“If I might be so bold,” the younger man tried again, “your family are captivating subjects for an artist like myself. I should be—ahem—greatly honoured to expand your collections further, if you saw any need.”

“…I see none,” Quences muttered, then rubbed at one eye with two fingers. “I agreed to this frivolity for one reason only—because a son of Lungbarrow calls you his friend.” The old man’s gaze grew distant again. “Poor, peculiar boy. Such brilliance. But those rituals of his, those theories… I should have…” His wandering gaze landed on the artist again, and sharpened. “In any case, our collections are exhaustive. All forefathers accounted for. Besides this… family tableau, what else could you give us?”

At this, the young man’s eyes glinted; he steepled his fingers together. “My Lord, there is one ancestor of your illustrious line whose likeness is not represented.”

“Impossible—”

“There is,” he interrupted, pressing his advantage. “Your House’s oldest ancestor, the Grandfather of you all. The Forgotten Founder… the Alterity… the other.”
Quences froze. 

“Naturally,” said the artist, still smiling, as he began to amble through the Hall, “it would have to be an artist’s vision—inspiration, not history—why, I might make them look like you, or your heir presumptive…”

Suddenly Quences was upon him, gripping his collar, pulling him close with incredible strength and speed. 

“How do you know this!?” he hissed. 

“I do read—”

“No one knows this. Do not speak this!”

“Oh, come, Lord Quences—” he chuckled fearfully. “—we’re all family here…”

“What?” He dropped his captive in outrage, then pointed at him with the cane. “You’re no Childe of Lungbarrow’s Loom, you Cliffside brat!”

“But the other has touched many Looms,” the artist protested. “Every cycle, there are more of us who carry their blessings, as you do, as all your House does. Sequence their chronogenetics if you doubt me! Why else should the City now crawl with Interventionists? Take dear old Ferain, as he now calls himself—old powers are returning, Kithriarch. At your will, when they rise, they shall bear Lungbarrow’s crest. Be ready!”

“This—this is nonsense!” the old man roared, and he ran for the stairs, stopping on a landing. “Witch-talk and nonsense—blasphemy upon the Founders! Out--out! Drudges, to me! A madman—I—I—”

Then Quences collapsed with a final cry, clutching at his chest. Within moments, wooden hands had seized the painter, and thrown him across the threshold. He lay in the dirt a moment, then made to limp home, the tools of his trade forsaken. 

* * *

The attack had not killed the Kithriarch. But he lay there for some hours; it was Innocet who found him in the night, and sounded the alarm. When he woke, much weakened, he would not speak of what had occurred, not to any living soul. 

And neither would Glospin, who’d lingered in the other room.