Oblivion’s Canticle

The last thing Elias Vayne remembers is the taste of blood on his tongue and the cold bite of regret as his life seeped into the pages of a book he should never have opened. The tome was ancient. Forbidden. Said to hold the truth behind the Hollow Star—a myth whispered about in locked libraries and half-burned scrolls. Elias didn’t expect answers. He didn’t expect to die, either. But death was only the beginning. When he wakes, it’s in a stranger’s body. Cassius Locke. Alchemist. Criminal. A man with a noose waiting at dawn. The face in the mirror isn’t his, but the searing mark burned into his chest says otherwise. The Hollow Star has claimed him, and it isn’t silent. It speaks in whispers. In dreams. In memories that aren’t his. And with every secret it offers, it takes a little more of him in return. Now Elias is trapped in a city where truth is a death sentence, where the Obsidian Choir hunts truth-seekers in alleyways slick with wax and blood, and where the Church of the Hollow Dawn preaches salvation through extinction. Nobles wear borrowed faces. Beggars speak in riddles. And the gods? The gods are dead—but they never stopped screaming. To survive, Elias must follow the threads of a ritual he never meant to complete, navigate a world that devours sanity, and unravel a conspiracy older than empires. Because the ritual didn’t bring him back by chance. It chose him. And the apocalypse? It isn’t coming. It’s already here.