c/w state/police violence (intro: 1:30-4:20), injury descriptions, discussions of death and post-death, family drama

“The rest knew only the ryne of power. They were blades singing to be used, even if by a tyrant’s hand. They came with their Bismuth nooses and gave Mawk’s Mantle its name.”

c/w bribery, death threats, family conflict

“Within a matter of weeks all manner of scandal and blackmail, violence and assassination incident brought the council to its knees. And we were left unsure as to whether to celebrate its demise, or fear what appeared in its place. The nim Shifs ascendant, a dictatorship ruled by Valour and Vigor. The Sunspear banners like summer’s flowers blooming on near every corner.”

c/w arrest, difficult parent/child relationships, lost pets

“You ever done much gardening Belka? You know how you never really see a sapling appear out of the soil. Just one morning it’s there? It was like that and, honest, it was hard to believe that it hadn’t always been there.”

c/w insects, eating of an envoy, temporary hearing loss

“The Gall, naturally, fell into Oken’s hands. That discarded thing, relic lost and living, vessel to a remnant’s power. I’m not sure whether then or later, he understood the potential of what he carried. Raised himself on power’s sap, could he truly read its dread portent? Maybe he saw it only as ember, in the carcass the jackal only sees a thing to be consumed, it does not behold the new life promised in the ground beneath.”

c/w insect-like envoy

“Lilylium was the second. Envoy born before there was Embrace, before there was Alamire. In many ways we were lucky that it was the Jubilant that faced them, even if it was to be in the labyrinth they’d made their hunting grounds.“

c/w arrest

“But while we fought for the right to weave our own fates, the Jubilant stood defiantly against the forces of regression. The Cut has always been the domain of the dead and the ghostly, weighed down by the heft what came before. The labyrinth echoed with the siren song of glories past.”

c/w possession, injury

“It shouldn’t be a surprise to hear that for some, the Cut were a better home than Embrace above. There were many who’d take dangerous strangeness over the hatred and oppression of the city proper.”

CW: possession, body horror, use of corpses, insects, uncertain reality

“But you know what unites the theories we had about that place? In all of them, the Cut is subject. It’s something attached, a barnacle lodged to the city.

But the Cut is not addition or reflection or parasite. It’s not mirror, but window – mud-caked, fogged and frosted. If we’re lucky, we can spy glimpses of the silhouettes inside. We can see the wonder, a whole ecosystem – spirit-grown and built from alien perspective.”

“I sent them to the Cut because it seemed like the best place for them. It’s obviously not a safe-house, but it were out of the authority’s control. As close to out of the city as I could get the Jubilant.  They’d still have to survive, to be canny; but at least there wouldn’t be half a city baying for their blood. If I’d known what was waiting for them down there…”