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 everything outside of his population’s singular purpose: to farm livestock. When disease eradicates every animal, the “overseers”—in actuality a large multiversal faction, 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 farmed nophek here to profit from the lucrative gloss that grows inside mature nophek brains. Running for his life, Caiden is separated from his best friend, ten year old Leta. He shelters in a half-buried starship—the Azura—and processes that his whole world was a feed production machine for more valuable nophek, and he no more valuable than meat.

Caiden is discovered by a crew of “passagers,” multiversal explorers—Laythan (the captain), Taitn (pilot), Panca (mechanic), Ksiñe (medic/gastronomer), and En (muscle/negotiator/rogue)—who help repair the ship. Caiden learns of the multiverse: many bubble-shaped universes of various size stuck together, with different physical laws inside each. And they discover 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 leaves him cursed 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 the chance to technologically accelerate through six years of aging and experience in a flash, making up for his childhood lack of education and skills, and preparing him for a new life in the multiverse at twenty years old. 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’ll use his own pain to forge himself into a weapon that can end them…if only he could find a way to reach the Casthen’s head.

His memory recording caught 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 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 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 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 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. He abandons his crew to join Threi and destroy the Casthen from the inside. To prepare, Caiden incubates in nightmares for days, living every permutation until he’s desensitized. 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.

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 most of her psychological attack 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. 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 a flesh wound cannot kill her species and she remains standing, revealed. Caiden gives chase, subdues her, and withstands her brutal memory attack…while Threi helps drag her to the Azura’s universe to destroy her.

It turns out Threi was desperate for access to Çydanza not only to depose her but to have her shapeshift into Abriss, his own sister and the leader of the Dynast—the multiverse’s largest and most powerful, though insular, faction—so that he could play out her murder and test that his heart was finally prepared for sororicide. Abriss’s gravitas is so intense none can harm 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 struggles to accept that he was a tool in Threi’s hand all along…though he used Threi in return for his own revenge. Caiden regrets what he became, but upon reuniting with his crew, they reinforce everything his self-sacrifice has done to make the multiverse a safer and more just place.

Wary of Threi, Caiden traps the man inside Çydanza’s old universe and flies off in the Azura, whose universe is the only way for Threi to get out again, like a key to a door. Caiden takes with him a pack of salvaged nophek pups, adopting one, named C, as a pet 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.

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. Threi previously rescued child Leta off the nophek planet and handed her over to Abriss. His sister was in need of orphans and gloss for a program aiming 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 and proposes a deal to use her as bait to catch Caiden and the Azura. Threi has remained imprisoned for the decade while Caiden keeps on the run, and needs the ship to escape. Abriss covets the ship for her Graven research. At the mention of Caiden, Leta’s childhood memories and attachment to him—erased through her conditioning—return, but it’s been so long she isn’t sure where he fits in her life now…or how she feels about being bait.