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.
Not a shop. Pin things up, argue with the characters, take the wallpapers, draw something terrible and send it in. The books are through that door, but nobody is rushing you.
seriously, take the wallpapers, they’re free ↓
series
characters
years
One membership. Every book to read, a school to learn the craft in, and somewhere to put what you write.
taught by a Sifu who has been drilling people for thirty years
The library
The writing school
Your own work
$10 a month
Cancel in two clicks, whenever you like. Your writing stays yours and comes with you if you go.
Not open yet
The school and the reader are built and you can try most of them free right now. Memberships open once the last of the plumbing is done. Put your name down and you will be told the day it happens.
Free right now, no account needed: the drills, Trope Roulette, the house rules on your own text, the Writing Desk, a book sample, and the arcade.
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.
Present day
Claimed by a goddess on an ordinary Tuesday, in the back office of a strip mall.
A broke martial arts teacher is made the voice and hands of a goddess in the places gods are no longer allowed to go, and finds out what that costs.
“They were everywhere. People. Hundreds of them, standing in the low red light, and every one of them was stone.”
Where it all begins
Three books, three gods. War, Desire, and the fragile Harmony born of both. The myth the whole universe grows out of.
WarBook One
The Ram in the Mud
War, born. A delta flood-orphan claws his way out of the mud, through the mercenary camps, and up into godhood. The story of how the world got its war-god, and what believing in him cost.
DesireBook Two
The Spark in the Shell
Desire, born. Out of a dark sea and a single spark of light comes the goddess who remakes every heart she touches. She learns that wanting is a power, and a wound.
HarmonyBook Three
The Child in the Silence
Harmony, born of War and Desire. Their child inherits a world that only holds together because someone keeps paying for it. The quietest god, and the most fragile peace ever kept.
Everybody has opinions
The characters argue about the gods, the war, and each other. Then the open threads hand the floor to you.
pick a fight, that’s what it’s for
Sifu Michael Johnson
the author
The gods were real. They walked around in bodies, they wanted things, and they nearly ended the world doing it. Then they withdrew, and left it to us. The heralds are the people they left holding the line: made, given one hard gift each, sent to stand where history would rather look away. Troy did not fall the way the songs say. Carthage did not burn for the reason the records give. There was somebody there, and they are not in the story, because they are the ones keeping it.
Sifu Michael Johnson
the author
What it is not: a chosen-one story. Nobody here is destined. Heralds are made out of the overlooked, they mostly die, and the ones who live are not rewarded for it. If you want a farmboy who turns out to be royalty, I have nothing for you and I say that with love.
Meret of Ardra
blind seer, herald-maker
A god asked for a girl and got her. Then the wind came, exactly as promised. So the bargain was real. That is the part nobody wants to sit with. It worked. Tell me what a thing being real has to do with it being owed.
Sael
the first herald
It has nothing to do with it. I have watched three thousand years of people confusing a thing that works with a thing that is right. A rope works. That does not make it a friend.
Lira
priestess of Coranthe
You are both talking about the ledger. I do not care about the ledger. I care that a mother handed over a child and was told to feel holy about it. Whatever answers to that name, I am not kneeling to it.
Kessa
corpse-carter
The keeper writes everything down. Every name. He will tell you that is love. I have carted enough bodies to know a record is not a rescue. He was THERE. He had the hands.
Sael
the first herald
You are right. I will not argue you out of it. A city cannot be held while it dies. A hand can. Most nights that is not enough and I write it down anyway.
Orin of Greywater
the one who did not fall
I held one gate. One. There were four. I think about the other three more than the one, and Meret told me that means the work took properly.
Turn the actual pages of The Stone Garden in your browser. The prologue and the opening chapter, free, right now.
no email, no download, just read it
Open the bookFourteen titles in print: gods and heralds, decades of martial practice, faith held against discipline, and the software built to make books.
The Herald is a tactics RPG set inside the books, and it plays right here on the site. Ten more games wait at the Cloud Forest arcade. No signup, no cost.
yes really, all of them, free
pick a thing. any thing. go on.
play it right here →
The Herald · set in the booksNot just read. Played.
takes two minutes, no signup, go on
“I told them. I told them in the square, in the temple, in the street, with my whole chest.”
The Character Vault
Pinned up crooked
Every character drawn every way, plus free wallpapers of scenes from the books. Your art goes up here too.
The spine of the saga
One timeline runs under all three series, from the first gods to now. 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.”
“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.
we’re new here too. come be early.
