Game of the Gods: An Ashen Book from the Start

[Steam magic · Gods aren’t deities · No mindless wish-fulfillment · Not a single-threaded narrative] A man in a gray robe pulled Roy into a world where steam and magic coexist, then forced a charred forbidden book into his mind. When he’s on the brink of death, the pages ignite, trading one page for one life. Others sacrifice their lifespans to use forbidden spells. Roy just checks the table of contents and uses whichever spell he lands on. Others worship gods; he discovers that the Crimson Lord, the Lord of Annihilation, and the Eye of Distortion, the three great evil gods, are projections of the same Outer Being. Gods aren’t gods. They conduct experiments in higher dimensions, while their followers wage fake holy wars below. Others spend thirty years climbing from apprentice to high rank. Roy’s book turns its own pages, and its spell index lights up on its own. The price is that the page burns away, and the forbidden spell is lost forever. The gang war in the Rust District is only the beginning. After the fall of Red Dawn, the empire’s four factions fracture and civil war erupts in full force. The royalists’ armored trains clash with the Democratic Coalition’s rock-skinned beast legions. There are more than two sides on the battlefield: a third party scavenges the corpses below, and something waits beyond the rift. After the war in the Western Continent comes the Eastern Continent’s cities of steel and glass, the Northern Continent’s rune-powered assembly lines, and the Southern Continent’s ancient god ruins, activated en masse by the Bloodbone Society. All four continents are connected beneath the rifts. The Ashen Book writes by itself for the first time just when everything seems to be winding down. “The third rift isn’t in the south. It’s in the west. It’s been open from the very beginning.” The thing on the other side isn’t watching. It’s waiting. And that blank page of his, without even a scorch mark, wasn’t burned away. It just hasn’t been written on yet.