GOD BOUND

A Series by Shaman J. Cross, Warden

The arrangement is older than any church. A god of war selects a vessel and fills it with fire. A goddess of grace selects another and fills it with warmth. The fire fights the darkness. The warmth sustains the fighter. And the woman who carries the warmth pays for all of it with years she will never get back.

No one is asked. They are chosen. The choosing looks like a gift. It is a leash.

The God Bound series follows this arrangement across three generations and three American cities as it bends, breaks, and is remade by the people trapped inside it. A mill town in the 1940s where a woman learns to stand up straight and then burns herself out holding the line. A steel city in 1963 where a man with fire climbing his bones discovers that the real war isn't against shadows — it's against a country tearing itself apart along the color line. A wired-up Seattle in 1996 where two teenagers inherit divine mantles, look at the cost, and say no.

Every generation, the gods find new vessels. Every generation, the vessels find out what the service actually costs. And every generation, someone has to decide whether the arrangement is worth the price — or whether the people doing the dying have the right to change the terms.

The knights carry fire. The priestesses carry warmth. The shadows feed on everything in between.

And the line holds, or it doesn't, depending on whether anyone is still willing to stand on it.

Book One: The Hearth and the Fire Book Two: The Ash and the Fire Book Three: Neon and Bone