Nethereal

The Sublime Brotherhood of Steersmen holds the Middle Stratum in its iron grip. Jaren Peregrine, last of the Gen, plies the fringe worlds as a freelance importer/exporter. Along with Deim: his business partner and the secret heir to a cursed priesthood, his adoptive big sister and fellow immortal Nakvin, and laconic mercenary Teg Cross, Jaren embarks on a series of increasingly risky jobs. Ruthlessly hunted by the cunning Master Malachi, Peregrine and his crew reluctantly join an occult conspiracy to break the Guild’s monopoly with an experimental ship. But when the Steersmen interfere, the Exodus is sent not beyond the stars, but into the pit.

Lost in a forgotten netherworld, Jaren, Nakvin, Deim, and Teg face hellish riddles, hostile navy officers, and a stowaway necromancer named Vaun whose mask hides more than just his face. In their struggle to escape, Jaren’s crew turns to exiled priest Sulaiman Iason and his army of the damned. The headstrong Gen meets his match in the zealous Sulaiman, who discovers that the ship’s power source is Elena Braun, the enigmatic daughter of the ship’s lead engineer. Deim is instantly infatuated with the ethereal girl, who encourages his obsession to gain her freedom from the evil avatar incubating within the Exodus.

Jaren strikes a fiendish bargain to return home in exchange for the ship’s cargo of mysterious stone cubes, but the Exodus crashes in the stygian Gen refuge of Avalon. Torn between his crew and his people, Jaren discovers the cubes’ true nature as vessels for Gen souls sent in tribute to Baal Mephistophilis of the Eighth Circle. A desperate race ensues to stop the baal from reaching Tzimtzum, the mythical place where the Words of Creation were spoken. Jaren and Nakvin’s bond is shaken, Teg’s identity is questioned, and Deim’s loyalty to Elena is tested as old gods die, new gods emerge, and the universe burns; whether for good or ill as yet unknown.