Warrick Davenport

In a vertical abyss of four nested hollow worlds connected by a titanic central drop-shaft, soaring wind currents and planetary barometric pressures dictate the laws of sail, ballistics, and survival. Fleets plunge across vacuum voids under full canvas, propelled by baric pyrodynamics—heavy iron mortars firing concussive charges of black powder spiked with deep-sea squid marrow to anchor ships to descending gravity lines. But from the black floor of the lowest hollow sphere, a cold phosphorescent miasma is ascending through the shafts. Wherever the phosphor fog touches gunpowder, munitions transform into swarming, chittering vermin that devour rigging and fuse gunners to their iron. As the civilized upper spheres shatter into paranoid purges and desperate naval raids over uncorrupted powder magazines, four souls caught across the war machines—bombardier captain Tomoki, trench dredger Natsue, citadel inquisitor Kazuma, and penal surgeon Ryosei—must navigate escalating mutinies and anatomical nightmares, blind to the terrifying truth that the rising phosphor is not an accident of nature, but the planetary immune system waking up to eradicate them all.

Retreating across the sun-scorched scrub plains of Ksar-Tafila, artillery prism-pointer Belkacem-oui trusts only trigonometry, split-glass quadrants, and cold iron. In a continental war fought with flintlock muskets, horse batteries, and coastal sloops, field artillery relies on calibrated tourmaline sighting stakes driven into the soil—crystalline conduits that bend cannon shot around terrain obstacles at the lethal cost of mechanical recoil strain. When an entire allied infantry square is butchered by shells fired from his own battery, Belkacem discovers the deflection stakes were intentionally swapped and misaligned. With eighty thousand soldiers bottlenecking in panic across arid gorges and hostile lancers closing the perimeter, Belkacem realizes the betrayal is not random sabotage: someone in imperial high command is calibrating their longest-range batteries to assassinate their own sovereign. Surrounded by superstitious line-soldiers and arrogant commanders who despise gunnery science, Belkacem must use cracked lenses and plumb-lines to uncover the conspiracy before the rear guard is broken and the empire collapses into slaughter.