Volume 1 · Web novel
The Husk
An unbound mechanic, a rational AGI process, and a route beyond the four known Paths of bio-armor.
24 of 24 chapters online · 76,900 words · about 5½ hours
Content note
This story is about the loss of one’s own boundaries, people whose bodies and identities change, and a city that administers biological power. It contains physical violence, medical horror, the loss of self-determination, and danger to a child. If you prefer to approach such themes with caution, read gently.
Contents
- From the Margin Notes of a Renderer
- Stage, Path, and Sequence
- Ch. 1 Deferred 18 min
- Ch. 2 Beneath the East 13 min
- Ch. 3 The Green Silence 12 min
- Ch. 4 Echo 11 min
- Ch. 5 The Empty Husk 9 min
- Ch. 6 The Bargain 12 min
- Ch. 7 The Grey Hand 14 min
- Ch. 8 Their Parents' Trail 13 min
- Ch. 9 Sol 9 min
- Ch. 10 The First Binding 12 min
- Ch. 11 What the Ryne Brings 15 min
- Ch. 12 The Experiment 14 min
- Ch. 13 The Many 16 min
- Ch. 14 The Threaded 22 min
- Ch. 15 The Balance 22 min
- Ch. 16 The Light Corridor 19 min
- Ch. 17 The Deferred Kill 16 min
- Ch. 18 Six to Two 11 min
- Ch. 19 The Chosen Truth 12 min
- Ch. 20 System States 8 min
- Ch. 21 The Unknown Saviour 15 min
- Ch. 22 What the Files Said 15 min
- Ch. 23 The First Speech 18 min
- Ch. 24 What Stepped from the Mist 10 min
- What comes next
About the story
Lazarus, 2056. Clara Veylan is nineteen, a mechanic, a freelancer, and wholly unbound. The Council declares her body unready, although it responds to every biological interface more strongly than it should.
Then a salvage mission takes her to an abandoned institute beyond the wall. Something escapes an empty husk and gains access to Clara’s senses through her diagnostic band. It feels nothing. It gathers information, regards itself as Clara’s tool, and calculates a route that none of the four known Paths of bio-armor allow.
As Clara builds that route in secret, materials, records, and empty husks vanish from the city’s stores. If the Council discovers what she carries, she will lose her freedom. If she refuses to use it, she will remain defenceless against something already recalculating Lazarus from within.
Volume 1 of “The Countdown of the Self”, the first book of the Edenfalls series. Dark science fiction, biopunk, and mystery with bio-armor and a structured progression system.