THE BURIED GOD
Chapter 1: The Gravedigger
The bodies came at dusk.
Damon stood at the edge of the God’s Grave, his shovel in his hand, his boots caked with black soil. The sun was setting behind the mountain, painting the sky in shades of blood and ash, and the long shadows of the dead stretched across the field like grasping fingers.
He had been digging graves since he was twelve years old.
He was twenty-five now.
He had buried thousands.
He had never gotten used to it.
The cart arrived, pulled by two mules with blindfolded eyes. The driver was an old man named Corvin, his face hidden beneath a hooded cloak, his hands wrapped in leather gloves. He never spoke. He never looked at the bodies. He simply drove.
Damon walked to the cart.
The bodies were stacked like firewood, their faces covered with gray cloth, their hands folded across their chests. They were all sizes. All ages. All stories that would never be told.
“How many?” Damon asked.
Corvin held up five fingers.
Damon nodded.
He unloaded the cart.
The first body was a child.
Damon could tell by the size, by the weight, by the way the cloth clung to the small, still form. He did not lift the cloth. He did not look at the face. He had learned long ago that looking made it harder.
He carried the child to the grave he had dug that morning.
The soil was loose. The hole was deep. The darkness at the bottom was absolute.
He lowered the body.
It landed with a soft thud.
He began to shovel.
The second body was a woman.
The third was a man.
The fourth was another child.
The fifth—
The fifth moved.
Damon stopped.
His shovel hovered in the air.
The cloth on the fifth body shifted — not from the wind, but from something beneath. Something alive.
He stepped closer.
The cloth shifted again.
He reached for it.
His hand was shaking.
He pulled the cloth back.
The face beneath was young.
A woman. Dark hair. Pale skin. Eyes closed. Lips parted. She looked like she was sleeping. She looked like she was dreaming. She looked like she was dead.
But her chest was rising.
Slowly.
Steadily.
She was breathing.
Damon stepped back.
His heart was pounding.
The woman’s eyes opened.
They were silver.
Not the silver of moonlight or starlight.
The silver of the mountain.
The silver of the god.
“Where am I?” she whispered.
Damon could not speak.
“Where am I?” she asked again.
“The God’s Grave,” he said.
Her silver eyes widened.
“They found me.”
The ground trembled.
Damon stumbled.
The mules screamed.
Corvin looked up, his hidden face turning toward the mountain.
The mountain was glowing.
Not with fire. With light. Pale and silver, pulsing like a heartbeat.
“He’s waking,” the woman said.
“Who?”
“The Hollow King. The buried god. The one I died to keep asleep.”
The ground trembled again.
The graves cracked.
The bodies began to rise.