Read Chapter One of the Earthbound Chronicles: Vol. 1

“When the roots rise, so too does truth long buried.”

—An excerpt from the Original Doctrine of Balance

I wake with a gasp, my heart stuttering like I’ve been running. It’s like I can’t escape, even in my dreams.

Sunlight streams through the cracks in the boarded windows, painting the abandoned apartment in pale gold. Too bright. Too late. The sun has already climbed past early morning.

I overslept.

Swearing under my breath, I scramble out of my sleeping bag and stuff it into my pack along with my knife, flashlight, and the handful of scavenged supplies I can’t afford to lose. I tug on my boots, drag my sweatshirt over my tangled hair, and wince as my joints snap in protest.

Sleeping on concrete is a slow way to ruin a body. Then again, so is staying anywhere for too long these days. Outside would have been better, if I could find a forest that hadn’t begun to rot from the decay.

The decay...

The memory crashes over me before I can stop it.

Fires swallowing the horizon. The ground splitting open like a wound. The air thick with smoke, rot, and something sweet and sickeningly wrong.

The Earth screaming.

She is sick.

My land.

My people.

My parents.

I swallow hard and shove the grief down before it can drag me under and render me useless. Everyone here is rotting. Their veins darken, their skin thins, their bones crumble. The decay eats them alive, aging them until they collapse into dust.

But it doesn’t touch me. I don’t know why.

All I know is what my mother whispered as life drained from her eyes.

“Find him, Arden.”

Her skin wrinkled and thinned before my eyes, thirty-eight to seventy in the span of heartbeats. My father’s hand tightened around hers as if love alone might hold them together.

“Find Riven. Find the enlightened one. Don’t trust his father. You are the last hope we have.”

Then they were gone.

Their bodies shriveling before my eyes, soon to become ash. I wanted to throw myself over them. To drag them back from the brink with my bare hands. To heal them the way I can heal the earth. As with everything else in this world, I couldn’t do anything.

I sat there while my parents drew their last breaths, only removing my hand from my mother’s when the fear that she would disintegrate around mine became too great.

I shake myself, knowing now is not the time.

I need to focus on finding Riven.

I rack my brain, trying to recall everything my parents told me about him. I know he’s Earthbound, part of the hidden race that doesn’t just live on the Earth—they are the Earth. They live within it, and their kind decides when the world lives or dies.

I remember the stories my mother used to tell me when I was growing up.

Stories of underground villages with no electricity or batteries—only glowing plants and walls that hummed with the pulse of the Earth. Tunnels carved through stone. Vast caverns filled with gardens nourished by ley lines. Children learning to speak with roots and streams as naturally as humans speak to one another.

I remember one story in particular. The one about the greedy king.

She told me he wasn’t content to love and serve his queen, though she was gentle and just. One day, he grew tired of standing beside her—tired of answering to someone whose connection to the Earth far surpassed his own.

Jealousy took root. So he left her. Left his kingdom.

He set out to build something of his own—a place where he would be revered as the Earth herself was.

But it still wasn’t enough. It never was. The greedy king couldn’t create. He had to destroy.

His bitterness poisoned everything he touched, and his hunger for power carved a wound into the Earth that never truly healed.

And still, he searched. Always searching for the strongest source of power in the land.

My mother used to warn me about him. About his people. She’d tell me that just because the kings in our stories weren’t always the same didn’t mean we shouldn’t stay just as vigilant as the queen.

And she would remind me, gently but firmly, that every queen needs a protector. She always ended the story the same way.

“If we ever fail you, you must find Riven. You will know him, and he will know you. And you must listen.” A pause. A weight I didn’t understand then. “He’s the only one who can prepare you... if we’re gone.”

I close my eyes and see his face before I mean to.

Tall.

Dark.

Impossible.

Even in my memory, he feels like the weight of centuries pressing against me. Fear coils in my stomach, twisting tight, but beneath it is something sharper: the nagging certainty that he is inevitable.

Inevitable and infuriating to find. It’s always a hard mission. Never instructions with a map or a helpful sign pointing the way.

THWOMP. THWOMP. THWOMP. THWOMP.

The sky roars above me.

They're coming. The harvesters.

Great metal beasts with spinning blades, chewing through forests, cities, corpses—anything left behind. Relics of the old world. Of the people who had helped poison the Earth in the first place.

The Ashen.

The people who turned their backs on my mother’s people. On the Earthbound. The Ashen are Earthbound too, but not like us. They thrive on decay. On control. On fear. They believe life must be pruned, reshaped, and sometimes destroyed to maintain balance—or to satisfy their own ambition.

They wield the Earth as a weapon, bending soil, roots, and stone to their will, but they never heal. Their eyes are cold and calculating, and centuries of watching the world rot have made them patient predators.

Where my mother taught me love for the Earth, the Ashen teach submission.

Or death.

The Ashen joined with the people of the Above World during the Great Decay, which wiped out seventy percent of the population. Seven out of every ten people, gone in the span of a few short years.

Shaking my head to clear the thoughts, I grab my pack and take one final glance around the room to make sure I haven’t forgotten anything. I slink through the shadows and climb back out the broken window I entered through.

I wasn't fortunate enough to find supplies in the abandoned apartment complex, but I am grateful for the warmth and shelter it provided overnight.

Spring in the United Kingdom can be miserable, the weather never quite deciding whether it wants to be lovely and warm or frigid and wet.

Pushing my hair out of my face, I continue down the cracked road stretching away from the building. There isn’t much wildlife left alive here now, but I spot the occasional bird fluttering in the distance or a weed growing through the barren pavement, surviving conditions it was never meant to endure.

I smile at it in camaraderie and keep moving.

I can spot the harvesters in the sky to the east, so I run as far as I can in the opposite direction, only slowing once the morning chill begins to fade.

The sun is fully overhead now, and I stop long enough to grab my water bottle. Taking a swig as I walk, I watch the ruins of the old world stretch around me in rust and bone.

Twisted metal. Collapsed buildings. Cars half-swallowed by creeping vines.

I move quickly, scanning the sky for the glint of machines or the distant thunder of rotors. Sensing nothing, I return my water to my pack and continue forward, eager to find supplies before I leave this stretch of abandoned city behind.

I survive where others won’t go. In infected towns, dead cities. Places thick with ghosts. 

The decay doesn’t kill me, but it hurts. Not my body exactly; inside it. It’s like the white-hot stab of grief you feel when you lose someone you love, except it has soaked into my ribs. The sorrow is packed beneath my skin, branding my bones from the inside out.

My mother once told me the old world had a saying for this feeling.

Magnus dolor est.

The people of the Transition had it, she said. They were sick with great grief, misery, and pain. People who watched the Earth fall sick and chose comfort over healing. Some of them wanted the world to burn. Some of them still do.

I tighten my grip on my pack and keep moving. I peek into broken and cracked windows as I pass, hoping to find something useful forgotten inside. Today is not my lucky day.

Each building seems emptier than the last, and I’m convinced scavengers have already picked this area clean. I contemplate venturing deeper into the city, toward shopping malls and forgotten grocery stores. I dismiss the idea quickly.

I avoid the densest ruins when I can. Too many bodies. Too many lingering last moments.

Most bodies decay into ash within moments, but some remain behind, rotted and gnarled like twisted tree trunks rooted to the earth. While they aren’t harmful, I do my best to avoid them.

Because when I touch them...

I see.

Their fear.

Their regrets.

Their final breaths.

And when I press my palms to the Earth, I feel her pain too.

Her memories.

Her slow, choking sickness.

Stop, I tell myself sharply. Focus.

I decide to leave the abandoned cityscape behind, my gaze catching on the distant horizon where green pushes back against blackened trees.

The forests I’ve seen haven’t looked this alive in a long time. Lusher. Deeper. Almost... calling.

A gentle tug pulls at my chest as I stare in that direction, subtle but insistent—like the Earth herself is guiding my choice. So I follow it.

I check my pack. My purifier bottle is half full, the spare is empty. I need a stream. Berries, maybe. Meat if I’m lucky.

My stomach growls in agreement.