Gormenghast Illustrated Trilogy Novels & Stories

A symbol carved into black stone. I knelt. My fingers brushed away moss. It wasn't a wolf crest. It wasn't Red Crescent. It wasn't Mystic Moon. Three crescent moons surrounded a crimson flame. "What is that?" Gorm crouched beside me. "I've never seen it." Neither had I. Yet... Somehow... I knew it. "I've seen this before." "When?" "In my dreams." His eyes widened. "You never mentioned symbols." "I never remembered them." The moment my fingertips touched the carving—

My pulse quickened as Emberlyn knocked on it with authority, announcing my presence to our father. "Father, I've brought Sheila along," Emberlyn said in her composed tone. There was a pause before father announced, "Come in." With a deep breath, I followed Emberlyn into the room. The door creaked open, revealing what appeared to be Marcus’s study. Tapestries depicting heroic battles and ancient werewolf lore adorned the walls, while shelves filled with leather-bound tomes and illuminated manuscripts whispered secrets of the past. The soft glow of enchanted candles bathed the chamber, casting dancing shadows upon the ornate furnishings.

He picked it up from the rusty ground, pocketed it, and kept moving. The eagle mount was burning, flames fueled by the lingering spirit of the dead salamander. The fire consumed the carcasses, drawing a blazing line along the front of Mad End’s Wall. Gildeon heard Ghulik’s small footsteps behind him. The goblin mumbled like a madman, spewing out a story about salamanders and sylphs losing their sanity upon contact with the wall. If that were true, then the sigilmaker would be useless to the army.

The landscape was alien and foreboding, a surreal amalgamation of shifting shadows and fragmented structures that seemed perpetually on the verge of collapse. The air was thick with an unsettling stillness, broken only by the occasional whisper of forgotten memories. Each whisper was like a ghostly touch against her skin, a fleeting sensation that left her shivering. The whispers were disjointed, fragments of conversations, cries, and laughter that seemed to echo from the very walls of Nyxterra. They whispered her name in haunting, fragmented tones, urging her deeper into the darkness.

Malleteagan’s POV We are slowly but surely advancing down through ill-dimmed, sewer-like channels that separate Oribus from Damnarynth, the next circle of Wengarthria. Now I understand why they call it the way they do. It is a damn labyrinth, although I was told that it got its name from all the damned souls that are built within it. This level of Wengarthria seems like an underworld maze. It is laid out so complexly that it almost reminds of a large underworld ant heap. Ghouls of lost souls loitering around, screeching and beginning for mercy. Arachnoid warriors are protruding and attacking us left, right and centre as we advance through stinky swamp sewage of Damnarynth that reaches my wai

The fissure closed behind me. Stone ground against stone, the sound echoing through the chamber like a final heartbeat. The gold light of the fortress vanished, swallowed by the darkness that rose from the crack. I was falling—not through air, but through shadow, through memory, through the screams of wolves who had been consumed by the king over centuries. Their faces flashed past me, pale and distorted, their mouths stretched wide in silent pleas. Some I recognized from the old texts—the first wolf's companions, her guards, her children. Others were strangers, their eyes hollow, their bodies thin, their hands reaching for me as I fell past them.

On the stone four statues: Gallus—green-black, wolf-headed, hooked beak bat-winged, tentacles coiled feet; a thin scorched seam still burned along its base. Abnegazar—pale stone veined with dull gold, crowned and angular, eldest in the way mountains are. Rathos—kiln-red and hairline-cracked, warped like clay that remembered fire. Ghast—bone-smooth, hollow-eyed, a scream made permanent. Between Abnegazar and Gallus sat a curl of golden coral—no story, no pedigree. Just a pretty reef relic that caught light and gave it back without promise.

Look closer. Her gaze settled on a particularly weathered book tucked away near the corner. Its cover was simple, but a faint embossed design caught the light - a pair of intertwined wolves beneath a crescent moon. The image sent a shiver down her spine, and her fingers tingled as she pulled it from the shelf. She opened it carefully, the pages crackling with age. The script was ornate, the kind that took a moment to decipher, but the accompanying illustrations made her breath catch. Drawings of wolves with hollowed eyes and jagged teeth, their forms twisted and monstrous, filled the margins.

He knew the path from the book: a narrow goat trail leading to a hidden cave overlooking the battlefield. He found it—a dark fissure in the cliffside, pulsing with a malevolent energy. Inside, on a crude stone altar, sat the artifact: a black cube of obsidian, veined with crimson light that throbbed like a diseased heart. He could hear the distant sounds of battle—the grunts of men, the sizzle of Keith’s fire magic, the unearthly shrieks of disintegrating ghouls. It wouldn't take them long. He had to move.

'That can't be good. The mist came rolling like waves from the woodlands, passing through the line of foliage and surrounding the trunks of the trees with an eerie haze of deathly darkness. It continued to expand into the field and began to envelop the grass far off in front of him. As it approached, he could see the image of two beasts running in the midst of the darkness. Their slender forms were like that of wolves crafted from smoke and shadows, their bodies a clouded phantom grey, and their piercing eyes a glowing purple which pulsated through them. 'What are those...?'