The Rootbound Archive

About this book

In the rain-slicked sprawl of Cascadia City, Liora Kane, a scarred and skeptical librarian, stumbles upon a horrifying secret: the library's ancient oak shelves are actually living veins of the city's collective subconscious. These subterranean roots feed on the unspoken spiritual doubts of the populace, sprouting glistening nodules that, when consumed, offer raw, addictive glimpses of one's true spiritual core. But the cost is steep—reality itself begins to fray, dissolving the physical boundaries of the user. Opposing Liora is Harlan Voss, a predatory real estate mogul with a cultist past who seeks to harvest these nodules for an elite, high-priced enlightenment serum. As Voss's machinations threaten to tear the city apart through mass identity swaps and psychic hemorrhaging, Liora forms a desperate alliance with Mira, an urban forager who knows the old ways of the land. Caught between her own repressed trauma and a burgeoning, terrifying spirituality, Liora must navigate a landscape of visceral body horror and erotic dissolution. She is forced to confront the literal ghosts of her past within the library's root-maze to prevent Cascadia from collapsing into a singular, chaotic consciousness.