Nophek Gloss Refresher

The Graven, Book 1 – Nophek Gloss – SPOILER Plot Summary

This is a synopsis of the key events and elements in the first book of The Graven trilogy, Nophek Gloss, for use as a memory refresher before starting the second book, Azura Ghost, and/or as a helpful guide for reviewers trying to recall specific elements. (A glossary is also available here.) If you have not read Nophek Gloss, please do not use this summary as a way to skip that book and start Azura Ghost—the stories were written to flow one into the other, and it’s impossible to capture all the elements and themes here. Thank you!

Fourteen-year-old mechanic Caiden grew up on an agrarian planet, ignorant of literally everything outside of his population’s singular purpose: to farm livestock. When a disease eradicates every animal, the “overseers”—in actuality a large multiversal faction called the Casthen—pack the human population into ships in the livestock’s place. They’re transported to another planet where they’re attacked and devoured by rare nophek, monstrous canine/feline beasts. The Casthen have secretly been farming nophek here to profit from the lucrative gloss that grows inside nophek brains. While running for his life across the desert, Caiden is separated from his best friend, ten-year-old Leta. He shelters in a half-buried starship and processes that his whole world was a feed production machine for more valuable nophek, and he no more valuable than meat.

Shortly after the slaughter, the planet’s existence becomes exposed to multiversal explorers called passagers, and a free-for-all raid for the gloss breaks out. Ships battle one another in orbit and across the atmosphere, driven bloodthirsty by the potential profits, while Casthen forces try to defend their investment. In the mayhem, Caiden is discovered by a stranded crew of passagers: Laythan (the captain), Taitn (pilot), Panca (mechanic), Ksiñe (medic/gastronomer), and En (muscle/negotiator/rogue). They have sympathy for Caiden and make a trade, helping him repair the strange ship he’s claimed ownership of in exchange for getting a ride off the planet once it’s flying again.

Once out of atmosphere and off into space, Caiden sees what a planet is, and learns of stars and the magnitude of the cosmos. He learns of the multiverse: countless bubble-shaped universes of all sizes stuck together and embedded within one another, with different physical laws of reality inside each. And they discover that the ship Caiden found—which he names the Azura—has never-before-seen Graven technology that allows it to generate a small protective universe of its own.

Plagued by loss and c-PTSD, Caiden craves vengeance. But the Casthen’s leader, Çydanza, and their headquarters, the Casthen Harvest, are carefully kept secrets. Unable to confront them head on, Caiden decides to technologically relive his memories so they can be recorded as evidence of the Casthen’s illicit gloss operation and turn other factions against them. A side effect of the tech leaves him wired to re-experience the same horrific events nightly in his dreams forever—a fair price to pay for justice, he believes.

In exchange for the memory recording, Caiden gains six years of technologically accelerated aging, gaining physical age and specific skill experience in a flash. He transitions from fourteen to twenty, thinking it makes up for his childhood lack of education and prepares him for a new life in the multiverse. However, his memory recording is manipulated by the Casthen, freeing them from blame and denying Caiden the justice that would let him leave his past behind him. His nightmares remind him he’s done nothing to stop the Casthen from inflicting this sort of trauma on others. He needs to use his own pain to forge himself into a weapon that can end the Casthen…if only he can find a way to reach their head.

His memory recording catches the interest of a high-ranking Casthen officer, Threi, who confronts Caiden with more hard truths: Caiden was engineered as a Casthen soldier in a project aiming to restore Graven genetics—including gravitas, a power to incite loyal, loving, pacifying feelings in others…a power that Threi shares. A shipment error sent infant Caiden into the gloss farming operation instead. Now with Threi’s help, the Casthen would welcome their “soldier” Caiden back with open arms: a way to get close to his target.

Threi’s and Caiden’s goals align. Threi has insinuated himself into every faction, playing every angle, with the ultimate aim of killing the Casthen’s leader, Çydanza, and taking over. But she is a vishkant, a near-immortal shapeshifting species immune to conventional damage and able to psychologically cripple people with a deluge of their worst moments and darkest imagination. Caiden, by his nightmares, has unwittingly become the key to withstanding this kind of attack. The Azura will be able to bridge into the otherwise lethal bubble universe that Çydanza keeps herself inaccessible within, while the energy of Azura’s universe can kill her otherwise immortal species.

Caiden is lured into alliance by Threi’s promise that there’s a way to nullify his nightmares. He’s also hurt by the idea that his found family might have been coerced to help him by gravitas instead of loving him for real. Grappling with complex feelings of worth and purpose, Caiden abandons his crew to join Threi and destroy the Casthen from the inside. To prepare, Caiden incubates in his nightmares for days, living every permutation until he’s totally desensitized to whatever Çydanza might throw at his psyche. But these experiences are breaking something else in him, molding him to the Casthen routine, forcing him to kill his kindness in order to be violent enough to survive in this place.

Fed up with delays and Threi’s many secrets, Caiden executes the plan early on his own, bridging into Çydanza’s universe with the Azura and attempting to haul her to her death inside the Azura’s universe. He withstands her psychological attacks regarding his past but isn’t ready for visions of harm to the chosen family he left behind and still loves. Çydanza escapes and Caiden is apprehended. Meanwhile, Caiden’s beloved crew shows up to rescue him. They’re caught and tortured, their sacrifice showing Caiden how valuable he was to them all along.

Broken free by Threi, Caiden saves his family and recovers the Azura. However, Çydanza has fled her protective universe and shifted shape to blend in, where she can be anything or anyone in the facility. Threi uses his gravitas to coerce the personnel into one area. He consumes a series of strange vials that enhance his gravitas enough to allow him to command the gathered hundreds to kill themselves. They obey, including Çydanza in disguise, but the flesh wound she inflicts cannot kill her species, and while the rest of the crowd drops dead, she remains standing, revealed. Caiden gives chase, subdues her, and withstands her brutal memory attack again while Threi helps drag her to the Azura’s universe to destroy her.

The person who Çydanza transforms into to try to ply Threi for mercy is his sister, Abriss, the leader of the Dynast: the multiverse’s largest and most powerful, though insular, faction. As Threi relishes the opportunity to play out the murder of his own sibling, thrilled by his hard-won emotional capacity to do so, Caiden realizes that this was Threi’s main goal all along. Deposing Çydanza was a bonus to his need to test that his heart was finally prepared for sororicide. Abriss’s gravitas is so intense, none can harm her or raise a word against her, and Threi insists that she is the multiverse’s true greatest threat. He’s been developing psychological and physical capabilities to confront her as an equal. With the Casthen also under his command, he has more power to bring war against the Dynast. Caiden’s experience of Abriss is that she’s gentle and just—was that the gravitas blinding him?—so he struggles to understand Threi’s obsession, and he struggles to accept that he was a tool in Threi’s hand all along…although he used Threi in return for his own revenge. Caiden regrets what he became to accomplish this feat, but upon reuniting with his crew, they reinforce everything his self-sacrifice has done to make the multiverse a safer and fairer place.

Wary of Threi, Caiden traps the man inside Çydanza’s tiny universe and flies off in the Azura, whose own universe is the only way for Threi to bridge back outside again, like a key to a door. Caiden takes with him a pack of rescued nophek pups from the Casthen facility, adopting one as a pet—named C—and releasing the rest on a secret, uninhabited planet where they can live free from exploitation. Caiden decides to stay on this same planet for a while to rest and heal and study the multiverse at his own pace.

Epilogue: Ten years later… Caiden’s childhood friend Leta, now twenty years old, is called to an audience with Abriss, in whose service she’s been for the past decade. While Caiden had been running for his life on the nophek habitat planet all those years ago, Threi rescued child Leta before she was devoured, and later handed her over to Abriss, knowing his sister was in need of orphans and gloss for her Graven research. Abriss’s “Graves” project aims to transform individuals into beings resembling what the ancient Graven were, possessing all the ethereal abilities thereof.

When Leta attends Abriss’s virtual meeting with Threi, he recognizes Leta as someone Caiden knew, and proposes a deal to use her as bait to catch Caiden and the Azura. Threi has remained imprisoned for the decade while Caiden remains on the run, and needs the Azura to escape. Abriss covets the ship for her Graven research. At the mention of Caiden, Leta’s childhood memories and attachment to him—which had been erased through her conditioning—return, but it’s been so long, she isn’t sure where Caiden fits in her life now…or how she feels about being bait.