Cloud Forest Publishing presents
The gods were real. They rose, they nearly ended us, and they withdrew, leaving the world in mortal hands. These are the books of what came after: a myth cycle, a secret history, and the reckoning still to come.
One world. Three tellings.
For three thousand years the histories have told only half of it. The other half was kept by the heralds, and one man has carried the whole of it since the first city fell.
Every book stands on its own. Read together, they are one continuity, from the birth of the old gods to the war still waiting at the end of it.
The Library
The myth-origin
How the gods rose, and how the world was nearly unmade.
A three-book myth cycle told close to the bone. The old gods are born into flesh and hunger: war, desire, and the fragile peace that has to be paid for. Austere, reverent, written like scripture the later books still remember.
The secret history
The gods withdrew. They left the world in the hands of the heralds.
An epic told across five thousand years of true history. Sael, the first herald and the only one who never dies, walks out of the myth age and into Troy, Carthage, and every dark turn the histories only half remember. Each book stands on its own. Read together, they hide a war.
The reckoning
The oldest enemy wakes, wearing a face you would follow.
The saga carried forward toward the reckoning the heralds have always feared. The same world, the same long war, brought at last to the turn it has been building toward since the first city fell.
The spine of the saga
One timeline runs under all three series, from the first gods to now. The books land at different points along it. Sael is the thread between them.
Before the cities
The old powers are born into the world, into bodies that can bleed and want.
Rebirth
The myth age
War, desire, and a peace paid for in blood. The gods come near to waking the world apart, then withdraw, leaving it in mortal hands.
Rebirth
The old farming
The first empire learns to take what the gods once gave. The first doomed keepers stand against it, and the first true writing is thrown into a well to survive.
Chronicles
Troy, Carthage, and after
A hidden hand moves behind the histories. The heralds are there, unnamed in the songs, paying for the turns the world only half remembers.
Chronicles
The centuries between
The war goes quiet, and does not stop. Bloodlines are planted. Old enemies return in new faces.
Chronicles
The reckoning
What the heralds held back for five thousand years comes due.
Herald Reborn
The thread
The first herald, and the only one who never dies.
He looks like no one worth remembering: a plain, road-worn man in a grey coat, with old scars and tired eyes. He has walked out of the myth age and through every dark turn of the histories since. He buries everyone. He keeps the account. When a herald is finally afraid, it is of the name he will not yet say.
Meet the heralds →Voices from the books
The first city burned between two rivers.
They were everywhere. People. Hundreds of them, standing in the low red light, and every one of them was stone.
The seed is given. It is never taken.
A truth can be a knife. Knowing where to place it is not the same as knowing when to draw it.
They reach for the child you buried because a buried child is the softest thing anyone carries.
It does not farm a city with fear. It farms one with love.
The Feed
3,000 years old
still can't get a day off
Nobody:
Cassandra: the horse is a trap
When you can literally tell they're lying
and have to just stand there and take it
Keep the account open
New releases, a look behind the world, and nothing else. No noise.
