Relics of Decay
An Elegy for Function
First-edition paperback · · 216 pages
A forgotten machine-world outlives its makers. In the wreckage, an unplanned existence begins to question its purpose.
Enter the novel
In a world where everything continues to function, almost nothing remembers why.
A being marked ɆĐɆ₦ awakens inside an ancient biomechanical complex. Cables hang like roots; machines shudder through tasks no one remains to supervise; chambers and corridors are built from material that might once have been alive. The world offers neither welcome nor explanation. Its mechanisms have outlived the people, or perhaps the beings, who gave them purpose.
The machinery of a vanished world
Beyond the abandoned chambers stretches an inhospitable expanse of rust-coloured wastes and broken structures. The remaining systems continue to operate with the exhausted obedience of a civilisation whose original intentions have disappeared. Symbols remain carved into the walls, but their meanings are uncertain; the difference between a designation, a name and an imposed function is not always clear.
The novel follows ɆĐɆ₦ through this landscape of forgotten design. Its journey is physical and visceral, marked by vulnerability, weather, pain and the persistent question of what the surrounding world was originally made to accomplish. The atmosphere is biomechanical and often grotesque, but its deeper unease arises from a system that continues to demand obedience when nobody can explain the command.
Existence beyond its assigned purpose
At the centre of Relics of Decay is an existential question: if a creature has been fashioned for a particular task, does that task define its entire being? And if the task no longer has any purpose, does the creature lose the right to exist?
What is more tragic · function without a purpose, or a purpose that can never again be fulfilled?
Here the horror belongs as much to uncertainty as to ruin. Identity, survival, inherited obligation and the possibility of compassion are explored without offering the reader a ready-made doctrine. The surrounding machines are failing, but the need to find meaning persists.
An elegy, rather than a conquest
This is not a conventional heroic rebellion against a monstrous world. There are no reassuring accounts of the civilisation that came before, and no authority to explain the purpose of its surviving machines. The story asks the reader to inhabit an experience before trying to interpret it: the sensations of awakening, the difficulty of recognising one’s own body, and the fragile difference between continuing to exist and finding something worth existing for.
The novel shares a concern with several other works in Mysteria Symposium: landscapes that refuse to explain themselves, inherited symbols whose original significance has been lost, and the human—or, here, more-than-human—need to impose meaning upon what remains.
The first edition and the planned second
First-edition paperback: 8 February 2025 · 216 pages · ISBN 978-1-0685475-9-1.
The first edition was prepared in Microsoft Word. A revised second edition is in preparation, with a new Adobe InDesign typesetting, editorial refinement and reconsideration of the original presentation. Its publication date and final page count have not been announced. The artwork displayed here is drawn from the original author-supplied Word edition; it is not presented as a completed second-edition cover.
Enter the text
The Reading Room contains a substantial opening selection, beginning with The First Breath and continuing into The Nameless Dawn. The extract preserves the wording of the 2025 first edition, so it may differ from the eventual revision.
Elsewhere in the symposium
Return to Paths Through the Novels ↗ · Explore the Reading Room ↗ · Read an essay on identity and continuity ↗
Published editions may be found through the author’s Amazon catalogue ↗. The catalogue is a general author listing, not a verified direct link to this edition.