On a planet where women are ritually erased, one girl refuses to fade...

The Story

At twelve, her blind faith cost a life. At seventeen, her survival will start a galactic war.

Raised to worship the Oracle's absolute law, twelve-year-old Syris believed she was fulfilling a sacred duty when she reported a heretic. She never intended for her childhood obedience to end in a brutal execution.

Years later, she masks her crushing guilt behind sheer cruelty. She has become the arena's most abrasive bully, openly mocking those who weep over the Degradation—a state-mandated ritual designed to slowly erase women’s minds and memories. But behind closed doors, Syris suffers from crippling panic attacks, terrified of her own impending erasure.

When her time for Initiation finally arrives, she expects to fade away. Instead, the unthinkable happens: she cannot degrade. Her biology completely rejects the process.

Branded a heretic for her failure to break, Syris is forced to flee into the monster-infested Dark Forest. But escaping her own people is only the beginning. What begins as a desperate flight from a planetary cult explodes into a sprawling cosmic war. With the regime she once served closing in and alien factions preparing to claim her for their own purposes, Syris must face her tainted past.

She thought her world was ending. But the universe is just getting started.

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Before she became a rebel, she was a true zealot.

Toward the Veiled Grave is set two years before the beginning of Against the Cosmic Fade. On a planet ruled by warrior monks, ten-year-old orphan Syris sneaks into a deadly combat mission in the Dark Forest, eager to prove her readiness as a fighter. But when the sacred Veil descends mid-battle, it triggers the Degradation, a brutal ritual that erases women's minds. The mission collapses into chaos, and Syris is thrilled to get the chance she has been longing for. Sign up and get the story delivered to your inbox.

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