Beneath the Ruins

This audiobook is narrated by a digital voice. The sun had not shone in three years, four months, and seventeen days. Lyra Thornfield knew this because she had kept count, marking each sunless dawn on the crumbling stone wall of her shelter with a piece of charcoal. The perpetual twilight that shrouded the world had become as familiar to her as breathing, though she sometimes wondered if she would forget what true daylight looked like. She pulled her tattered cloak closer around her shoulders as she navigated through the ruins of what had once been the grand city of Aethermoor. Skeletal remains of buildings reached toward the ashen sky like broken fingers, their windows long since shattered, their walls blackened by the Great Darkening that had consumed the realm. The cobblestones beneath her feet were slick with perpetual moisture, as if the very air wept for what had been lost. Lyra's destination was the old cathedral, where she had been told she might find medicinal herbs growing in the abandoned gardens. Her adoptive father, Matthias, had been suffering from a persistent cough that grew worse each day, and the healer's supplies had run dangerously low. In this world where hope seemed as scarce as sunlight, small acts of care were all that kept people tethering to life. As she rounded a corner, her foot caught on a piece of loose stone, sending her stumbling forward. Strong hands caught her before she could fall, steadying her with surprising gentleness. She looked up to find herself staring into eyes the color of storm clouds, set in a face that seemed carved from marble. The stranger's dark hair fell across his forehead, and there was something about his bearing that spoke of nobility, though his clothes were as worn and patched as anyone else's in this desolate world.