Roots Of Osidian

By Ethan Ross

For three hundred years, the survivors of Anchor-Home have clung to the shadows of the Southern Vents, scavenging the rusted remains of a world they no longer understand. In a land frozen by the "Archive"—a cold, clinical security system left behind by the departed Sky-People—life is a glitch, and humanity is merely a biological impurity waiting to be erased. 

Kaelen is a Rigger, a man who fixes what is broken to keep his people breathing. But when he discovers a silver-scaled gauntlet that pulses with the forbidden "Source Code" of the ancients, he inadvertently triggers a planetary awakening. As the "First Rain" falls for the first time in centuries, it brings more than just water; it unleashes a primal, tectonic hunger from the planet's heart and summons the Sky-People back to finish their "Total Purge." 

Caught between a machine god that wants to delete him and a planet that wants to consume him, Kaelen must lead a band of outcasts to do the impossible: rewrite the laws of reality. To save his home, he must stop being a scavenger of the past and become the architect of a new evolution. 

The Sky-People think the world is a library. Kaelen is about to show them it's a jungle. 

ROOTS OF OBSIDIAN 

• Language: English
• Publisher: Ethan Ross
• Release date: Dec 31, 2025
• ISBN: 9798233530722

Ethan Ross

Ethan Ross is a versatile and prolific author who refuses to be confined to a single genre. While he is acclaimed for his bone-chilling holiday horror, such as the terrifying Santa's Slay List and the short story collections like The December Dark, he demonstrates mastery across the literary spectrum. In addition to crafting relentless tales of winter dread and forgotten folklore, Ross also writes romance that explores the complexities of human connection, high-stakes thrillers that keep readers on the edge of their seats, and many other genres, proving his capacity to engage audiences with a wide array of narrative styles and emotional depths. His diverse body of work showcases a broad storytelling range that promises something for every type of reader.

Book preview

Prologue

The sky was not always a graveyard.

In the ancient texts of the Archive of Ash, it is written that the world was once a singular, unmoving mass of stone and soil. There was no Abyss, no High Currents, and no Great Behemoths to carry the weight of humanity. But that was before the Fracture—the moment the earth grew tired of its own stillness and shattered into a billion jagged teeth, all reaching for a sun they would never touch.

The Great Behemoths had arrived then, emerging from the primordial mists of the lower rifts. They were creatures of impossible scale: turtles with shells the size of provinces, whales whose songs could move the tides of the atmosphere, and serpents long enough to wrap around the world twice. They offered their backs to the survivors of the Fracture, and for three thousand years, a delicate symbiosis held. Humanity built cities of brass and glass upon the beasts, and in return, the mists of the high sky provided the Behemoths with the Aether they needed to breathe.

But empires are built on the arrogance of forgetting.

In the year 302 of the Third Ascension, the kingdom of Oros sat atop the Behemoth known as Zal-Gora. Oros was the jewel of the Shattered Kingdoms, a spire of white marble and gold that pierced the very ceiling of the world. Its people didn't believe in the symbiosis. They believed in dominion.

High Priest Malakor stood at the edge of the Sovereign’s Balcony, his silk robes snapping in the thin, freezing wind. Below him, the vast, leathery expanse of Zal-Gora’s neck stretched out for miles. The creature was ancient, its skin encrusted with centuries of mineral deposits and the ruins of lesser civilizations that had failed to hold on.

The extraction is ready, Your Eminence, a voice whispered from the shadows of the arched doorway.

Malakor did not turn. He was watching the Breath of the World—the shimmering aurora of blue Aether that pulsed within the Behemoth’s throat every time it inhaled. Is the Great Needle secure?

The diamond-tipped bore has reached the spinal marrow, the engineer replied, his voice trembling. The pumps are primed. We will harvest more Aether in a single hour than the Sky-Riggers scavenge in a decade. Oros will never go dark again.

Malakor smiled. He raised a hand, and with a single, sharp motion, gave the signal.

Deep beneath the city, in the lightless caverns of the Behemoth’s shell, a massive clockwork mechanism groaned into life. A needle the size of a cathedral tower, forged from cold iron and tipped with indestructible crystal, was driven downward by the weight of a thousand steam-pistons.

It didn't just pierce the skin. It shattered the soul.

Zal-Gora didn't scream—at least, not in a way human ears could hear. Instead, the very air around Oros turned to ice. The clouds beneath the city’s hanging gardens curdled into a sickly grey. For a heartbeat, the entire world went silent.

Then, the tilt began.

It was slow at first. A wine glass tipped over on a nobleman’s table. A chandelier swayed an inch too far to the left. But then, the groan of shearing stone echoed through the streets. The Behemoth was no longer swimming through the currents; it was collapsing.

Malakor gripped the railing as the horizon began to climb. The sun, which should have been setting, suddenly raced upward. The great creature, drained of its vital essence in a heartbeat of greed, had died mid-flight. Its wings—massive membranes of light and skin—shriveled like burnt paper.

The anchors! the engineer screamed, stumbling onto the balcony. The safety chains are snapping! We're losing buoyancy!

Oros, the city of gold, began to slide.

Buildings that had stood for centuries were ripped from their foundations. The marble towers didn't just fall; they were flung into the void as Zal-Gora rolled over in its death throes. Thousands of people screamed, a collective wall of sound that was quickly swallowed by the roar of the rushing wind.

Malakor watched as his world disintegrated. He saw the great Library of Oros crumble, spilling ten thousand years of history into the Abyss like autumn leaves. He saw the Sovereign's guard try to launch the escape skiffs, only for the vessels to be crushed by the falling debris of the palace itself.

As the city plummeted into the violet mists of the Abyss, Malakor felt a strange, cold clarity. He looked down and saw the other kingdoms—the tiny specks of light on the backs of other Behemoths far below. They were watching. They were seeing the jewel of the sky turn into a falling star of fire and ruin.

We were the warning, Malakor whispered, the air being ripped from his lungs. And they will not listen.

Oros hit the cloud layer and vanished. No sound came back. No debris floated back up. There was only the empty space where a kingdom had been, and the lingering, bitter scent of burnt Aether.

The other Behemoths felt the death of their kin. Across the Shattered Kingdoms, the great beasts stirred in their sleep. They felt the sting of the needles, the weight of the parasites, and the cold realization that the pact was broken.

The era of the Stable Sky ended that night. The era of the Great Awakening had begun. And in the shadows of the remaining cities, a new generation of Beast-Speakers was being born—children who could hear the rising anger of the world-carriers.

The sky was no longer a home. It was a battlefield.

Chapter 1: The Pulse in the Granite

The air at the edge of the world was a thin, freezing soup of ozone and pulverized ice. It was the kind of cold that didn't just bite the skin; it hunted for the marrow, seeping through the layers of boiled leather and wool that Kaelen wore as his only defense against the void.

He hung suspended by a single hemp-and-wire rope, three thousand feet above the violet mists of the Abyss. To his left, the flank of the Great Behemoth, Orynx, rose like a vertical continent of slate-gray skin and calcified barnacles. To his right, the underside of Aethelgard—the City of Clockwork—clung to the beast’s shell. From this vantage point, the city looked less like a triumph of engineering and more like a desperate parasite, a cluster of brass domes, hanging gardens, and soot-stained factories desperately trying not to lose their grip.

Kaelen! Report! The pressure in the third stabilizer is red-lining!

The voice crackled through the copper acoustic tube clipped to Kaelen’s collar. It was Jax, his foreman, perched safely on a maintenance catwalk five hundred feet above. Jax was a man of schedules and mechanical certainties, but his voice was currently pitched at a frequency that suggested those certainties were fraying.

Kaelen didn't answer immediately. He couldn't. He had pressed his bare palm against the cold, tectonic surface of the Behemoth’s skin.

A Sky-Rigger’s first rule was to never touch the skin without gloves. The oils of the human hand were said to irritate the beast, and the freezing temperatures could weld skin to stone in a heartbeat. But Kaelen wasn't just a Rigger. He was a Speaker, a secret that carried a death sentence in a city ruled by the Sovereigns.

As his skin met the gray expanse, the world of metal and rope vanished. He didn't hear the wind or the hiss of steam valves. Instead, he felt a vibration—a deep, rhythmic thrumming that resonated in his very bones. It was slow, ponderous, and ancient.

Thrum-thrum.

It was a heartbeat. Not the erratic, panicked heart of a human, but the tectonic pulse of a god. For a thousand years, Orynx had been a silent carrier, a living mountain drugged into a state of perpetual, dreamless sleep by the Sovereigns’ Aether-needles. But today, the dream was ending.

Kaelen! Answer me or I’m cutting your line to save the rig! Jax’s voice screamed through the tube.

Kaelen pulled his hand back, the skin raw and stinging from the cold contact. He grabbed the copper mouthpiece. The stabilizer isn't failing because of a leak, Jax! The shell is shifting! The Behemoth is expanding its ribcage!

Don't be a damn fool! Jax snapped back. Behemoths don't expand. They are as stable as the earth itself. Tighten the primary bolts and get back up here. The Sovereigns are lighting the Beacon tonight for the Centennial, and the winds are going to kick up to Gale-Force Seven once the heat hits the atmospheric crystals.

Kaelen looked up at the Heart of the city—a massive, central spire that pierced deep into the Behemoth’s spine. Within that spire sat the Aether-Pumps, the titanic brass syringes that kept the creature sedated. He could see a faint, sickly blue glow emanating from the vents. They were over-pumping. The Sovereigns knew the beast was stirring, and they were trying to drown its consciousness in more liquid magic.

It won't hold, Jax! Kaelen yelled, but a sudden, violent lurch drowned him out.

The world tilted fifteen degrees to the west. Aethelgard groaned, a sound of a million metal joints screaming in unison. Above Kaelen, a primary support chain—each link the size of a carriage—snapped with a sound like a lightning strike. The chain whipped through the air, shattering a stained-glass window of a noble’s manor before vanishing into the Abyss below.

Kaelen was thrown outward, his safety line snapping taut with a force that nearly crushed his ribs. He swung like a pendulum over the infinite drop, the violet clouds below swirling as if agitated by a giant hand.

May the Sky-Father catch me, he whispered, his boots scrambling for purchase against the shifting shell.

As he swung back toward the hull of a hanging warehouse, he saw it. A crack was forming in the Behemoth’s skin. It wasn't a wound; it was a pore opening. From the dark fissure, a cloud of iridescent gas erupted—raw, unrefined Aether. It hit the oxygen of the atmosphere and ignited into a pale blue flame that raced up the side of the city.

The Aether is venting! Kaelen shouted into the tube. Jax, get everyone off the lower catwalks! The whole sector is going to ignite!

There was no response from the tube. Looking up, Kaelen saw why. The explosion of gas had sheared the maintenance platform where Jax had been standing. The catwalk hung by a single wire, swaying precariously.

Kaelen didn't hesitate. He began to climb. He bypassed the mechanical pulleys, using the raw strength in his arms and the intuitive knowledge of the Behemoth’s surface. Every time his hand touched the skin, he heard a fragment of a thought—an ancient, groaning hunger for the sky.

Too... heavy... the beast thought. The weight... must... fall...

Not today, old friend, Kaelen gritted through his teeth. You can't wake up yet. There are a hundred thousand souls on your back who don't know how to fly.

He reached the first landing, his fingers bleeding through his gloves. He hauled himself onto a narrow brass ledge just as the warehouse he had been swinging near gave way. The entire building—a three-story structure of wood and iron—slid off the Behemoth’s flank. It fell in silence for a few seconds before the atmospheric pressure ripped it apart, scattering crates of silk and spice into the void like confetti.

Kaelen sprinted toward the main lift, but the path was blocked by a group of City Guards in their polished silver breastplates. They weren't helping the Riggers; they were barricading the gates to the Upper Tiers.

Stand back, Rigger! the lead guard shouted, leveling a steam-powered rifle at Kaelen’s chest. The Upper City is under lockdown by order of the Sovereigns. No one from the Lower Docks is permitted entry.

The whole sector is shearing off! Kaelen pointed toward the encroaching blue flames. If you don't let these people through to the anchor-vaults, they’re dead!

Order is the only thing keeping us in the sky, the guard replied, his eyes cold. If the Lower Docks must fall to save the Spire, so be it.

Kaelen felt a surge of heat that didn't come from the blue fire. It was a resonance from the Behemoth itself. The creature’s anger was mirroring his own. He felt the static electricity in the air rise, his hair standing on end.

You don't understand, Kaelen said, his voice dropping to a low, resonant tone that seemed to vibrate the very metal of the guard’s rifle. You think the city is falling. But it's the Behemoth that’s rising. And it’s tired of carrying men like you.

A second tremor shook the world, more violent than the first. The ground beneath the guards buckled. Kaelen didn't wait for them to recover. He lunged forward, sliding under the rifle's barrel and vaulting over the barricade. He didn't head for the safety of the Upper Tiers. He headed deeper—toward the Heart.

If he could reach the Aether-Pumps, if he could use his Speaker’s gift to talk the Behemoth back into a shallow sleep while slowly reducing the pressure of the needles, he might save the city. But he knew the Sovereigns would be there, and they didn't take kindly to anyone—especially a Rigger—touching their god-engines.

As he ran through the twisting pipes and hissing steam of the inner city, the sky outside turned a bruised, violent purple. The Centennial Beacon at the top of Aethelgard flared to life, but its light was flickering, a stuttering heartbeat in the dark.

The Great Awakening wasn't coming. It was here. And Kaelen was the only person who could hear the first words of the storm.

The Guts of Aethelgard were a claustrophobe’s nightmare. Here, the opulent marble of the upper spires gave way to a dense, humid labyrinth of thrumming copper pipes, weeping iron valves, and the heavy, metallic scent of heated oil. It was the space between the city’s floorboards and the Behemoth’s skin, a three-hundred-foot layer of structural scaffolding that kept the parasite attached to its host.

Kaelen navigated the catwalks with the frantic grace of a man who had spent half his life in the dark. Above him, the ceiling vibrated with the heavy footfalls of citizens fleeing toward the escape skiffs; below him, the floor was nothing more than a series of iron gratings that looked down into the infinite violet maw of the Abyss.

Keep it together, Orynx, Kaelen whispered, leaning his forehead against a massive, pulsating Aether-conduit. Just a little longer.

The conduit felt hot—too hot. The liquid Aether inside was bubbling, reaching its boiling point as the Sovereigns pushed the pumps to their breaking limit. If a single pipe burst here, the resulting explosion would vaporize the entire district.

As he rounded a corner toward the Central Injection Chamber, he stopped dead. The air here was thick with a shimmering, blue mist. Standing in the center of the walkway was a figure clad in the white and gold robes of the Priesthood of the Sky—a Weaver. These were the elite sorcerers who translated the Sovereigns’ will into the magical frequencies that controlled the needles.

The Weaver was slumped against a railing, his hands glowing with a dying, flickering radiance. He was trying to knit a ruptured pipe back together with light-threads, but his fingers were shaking too hard.

It's no use, Kaelen said, stepping into the dim light of a flickering gas-lamp.

The Weaver spun around, his eyes wide with a mixture of terror and aristocratic disdain. A Rigger? How did you get past the security seals? Leave this place! The Aether-leak will poison your lungs in minutes.

I’m already poisoned, Kaelen replied, gesturing to the blue veins beginning to trace a map up his own forearms—the mark of a Speaker who had spent too much time listening to the world. You’re pushing the pressure too high. You’re not sedating him anymore; you’re torturing him. That’s why he’s shaking the city off. He’s trying to kill the pain.

He is a beast! A tool! the Weaver spat, though his voice lacked conviction as another tremor sent a shower of red-hot rivets raining down from the ceiling. The Sovereigns have commanded the Great Awakening be suppressed at all costs. The Centennial celebration must proceed!

The Centennial is a funeral if you don't stop the pumps, Kaelen countered. He stepped toward the Weaver, his hand outstretched. Give me your focus-crystal. I can talk to him. I can settle the nervous system before the whole spine fractures.

The Weaver recoiled as if Kaelen had brandished a dagger. You... you’re a Speaker? A heretic? He raised his hand, the light-threads sharpening into jagged needles of pure energy. I should strike you down where you stand. The Law of the Sky is clear—no mind shall touch the Behemoth but the Sovereigns'.

Then the Law of the Sky is going to fall three thousand feet into the mist, Kaelen said, his voice dropping into that terrifying, resonant register.

He didn't wait for the Weaver to strike. He lunged. But he didn't attack the man; he attacked the machinery. Kaelen kicked a manual release valve on the main Aether-line. A jet of superheated steam hissed out, creating a blinding curtain between them.

Under the cover of the mist, Kaelen scrambled up a vertical ladder, his lungs burning from the Aether-rich air. He reached the primary Injection Needle—a brass cylinder the size of a lighthouse that disappeared directly into the Behemoth’s flesh.

He pressed both hands against the cold metal of the needle’s housing.

Orynx, hear me, he projected, closing his eyes and pouring every ounce of his will into the connection.

The response was like being hit by a tidal wave. PAIN. COLD. THE SMALL THINGS BITE.

The Behemoth’s consciousness was vast and slow, but its agony was sharp. Kaelen felt the sensation of the thousand needles piercing his own back. He felt the suffocating weight of the city, a cold, dead pressure that never let him breathe.

I know, Kaelen whispered in the silence of his mind. I am a small thing, but I am not a biting thing. Sleep just a while longer. If you fall now, the fire will follow you down. Let us unhook the needles together. Give me time.

For a breathless moment, the tremors stopped. The city of Aethelgard hung in a terrifying, unnatural stillness. The Weaver below stopped his chanting. The guards in the upper tiers lowered their rifles.

Then, the Behemoth sighed.

It wasn't a sound, but a release of pressure. The Aether-conduits cooled. The blue fire outside dimmed to a dull ember. The creature had accepted the plea—for now. But Kaelen could feel the cost. His own nose began to bleed, the copper-tasting warmth dripping onto his lips. Connecting with a Behemoth without the Sovereigns' shielding was like trying to hold a lightning bolt in a glass jar.

What did you do? the Weaver called out from the mist, his voice hushed with awe and horror.

Kaelen slid down the ladder, his legs shaking so violently he nearly collapsed. He wiped the blood from his face and looked at the priest.

I bought us an hour, Kaelen rasped. Tell your Sovereigns to start the evacuation. Tell them the Great Awakening isn't a myth anymore. The host is waking up, and he’s hungry.

Kaelen turned and vanished into the shadows of the Guts, leaving the Weaver alone in the shimmering blue silence. He had saved the city for the moment, but he had also revealed himself. The hunt would begin soon, and in the Shattered Kingdoms, there was nowhere to hide once you left the safety of the stone.

High above, the Centennial Beacon finally stabilized into a solid, golden glow. To the citizens of Aethelgard, it looked like a sign of triumph. To Kaelen, it looked like a target.

Chapter 2: The Hall of the Sovereigns

While the Guts of Aethelgard bled oil and Aether, the Upper Tier—known as the Celestia—shimmered with a defiant, artificial gold. Here, the