The Cave of Past and Present - Couverture souple

Bradley, Scott Justin

Couverture souple

ISBN 10 : 1069724432 ISBN 13 : 9781069724434

Editeur : The New Appalachian Workshop, 2026

Synopsis

The Empire erased the mountain first.

On official maps, Uchiza does not exist. Its name has been scraped from survey sheets, its place buried beneath corrected records, revised histories, and the polished lies of imperial order. But when scholar Moria Chione receives word that a missing expedition may have discovered something impossible in the north, she is pulled toward a mystery the state has already begun to suffocate. What begins with stolen notes, vanished colleagues, and a trail of censored reports becomes a journey into a landscape where knowledge itself is under surveillance.

Beyond the last safe roads, Moria and her companions find Uchiza: a mountain that should not be there, and a cave that behaves less like a ruin than a system already aware of their intrusion. Its walls bear impossible inscriptions. Its chambers depict a world older than any accepted history. Stone seems worked by no known hand. Light bends wrongly. Air pressure fails to match visible space. And in its vast reliefs and hidden records lies evidence that human civilization may not be the first power to rise, conquer, and bury the truth beneath monuments, doctrine, and fear.

Most of them do not come back out.

Moria survives with fragments: a scorched satchel, a broken calliper, a dead man’s letter, and the knowledge that silence would finish the Empire’s work for it. Because the deeper she looks, the more she begins to understand that Uchiza is not merely an archaeological discovery. It is a witness. A record of recurrence. A warning carved across deep time. Feathered dragons, impossible engines, vanished civilizations, and powers older than memory all cast their shadows through the cave’s shifting testimony. What was dismissed as myth may in fact be history too terrible to preserve openly.

Now Moria must decide what it means to tell the truth in a world built to erase it. Reports can be sealed. Archives can be corrected. Witnesses can disappear. But once a story escapes into the world, it can become harder to kill than any person who carries it.

The Cave of Past and Present is a dark epic fantasy of buried records, imperial violence, lost civilizations, ancient technology mistaken for myth, and the unbearable cost of remembering. Blending archaeological mystery, political intrigue, cosmic dread, and mythic fantasy, it opens The Echoes Saga with a story about what power destroys, what memory preserves, and what waits in the dark when history refuses to stay buried.

A propos du livre

À propos de l'auteur

From the rugged farm fields of Meigs County, Ohio-where dawn's hush and the wild tang of soil first taught him that all stories begin in the churn of memory-Scott Justin Bradley has forged a singular career at the crossroads of myth, museum, and manuscript.Holding a Bachelor of Arts in History (2003) and a Master of Arts in Public History (2005) from Wright State University, Bradley spent over sixteen years with the National Museum of the United States Air Force in Dayton, Ohio. There, he oversaw major exhibitions and curated collections that included uniforms, firearms, and munitions, earning the U.S. Air Force's Exemplary Civilian Service Award and Meritorious Civilian Service Award for his distinguished contributions to aerospace heritage.In 2020, he moved to Thunder Bay, Ontario, and took on the role of Executive Director at the Thunder Bay Historical Museum Society. There, he shaped the museum's strategic direction, managed daily operations, led curatorial and financial initiatives, and grew community programs-bringing history to life for a diverse and inclusive audience. He also teaches Museum Studies at Lakehead University and chairs regional heritage boards, including the Arts & Heritage Alliance of Thunder Bay and the City of Thunder Bay's Tourism Investment Committee-a reflection of his dedication to local history and civic engagement.Parallel to his archival and institutional work, Bradley is the founder of his imprint, The New Appalachian Workshop, conceived as a place where craft meets conscience. His fiction is alive with archaeology, echo-memory, and the clash of empire and wilderness. His novella The Cave of Past and Present channels ruined giants, imperial legions astride megafauna, and subterranean reckonings. This work is rooted in the medieval re-enactor's hands-on sensibility, as seen in the Society for Creative Anachronism, where he was knighted in 2012, and the historian's archive of the fantastic.When not writing or directing museum exhibits, Bradley gardens, hikes in Northern Ontario's wilds, cares for his dogs and cats, and gamely returns to the RPG table for sessions of Dungeons & Dragons-a hobby begun in 1990 that now feeds his mythic sensibility and narrative imagination.Scott is married to Jennifer; together, they raise two children in Thunder Bay, in a home where the buried traces of hill-giant ruins sit in metaphor beside the maple trees and lake winds of the north. He writes toward what lies beneath and beyond: ruin, renewal, the echo of story through machine and myth.

Détails de l'édition

• Éditeur: The New Appalachian Workshop
• Date d'édition: 2026
• Langue: anglais
• ISBN 10: 1069724432
• ISBN 13: 9781069724434
• Reliure: Broché
• Numéro d'édition: 2
• Nombre de pages: 256
• Coordonnées du fabricant: Printed by Amazon on behalf of the author; https://www.amazon.fr/hz/contact-us; ; c/o Amazon Media EU S.à.r.l., 38 Avenue John F. Kennedy; Luxembourg; L-1855; Luxembourg