In the cyberpunk megacity of Noveris, living biotech tattoos are the ultimate body augmentation - bestowing superhuman abilities on the elite...for a price.
When struggling artist Alex defies warnings and undergoes a forbidden ritual to receive the rumored "Progenitor's Kiss" tattoo, they unleash an ancient symbiotic force bent on transcending the boundaries of human existence itself.
Reborn as the godlike entity Ankhrava, Alex finds themselves at the center of a metaphysical maelstrom. Their unstoppable new powersattract the terrified scrutiny of Noveris' rulers, pitting Alex against a cyborg vanguard determined to extinguish the cosmic threat by any means necessary.
But in truly chilling fashion, it's revealed that the sentient ink's agenda is to consume and "repattern" all reality across a higher dimensional existence. Its hypnotic fractal manifestations ignite an apocalyptic metamorphosis across the city's augmented citizens - some willingly embracing the delirious expansions of their consciousness, others tragically losing their humanity.
Caught between clashing augmented tribes and realities unraveling, Alex and a renegade xenobiologist make one final push to excise the cosmic organism. But in doing so, they catalyze the very transfiguration they sought to prevent - unleashing a tsunami of cosmic transcendence that may represent either the next step in human evolution...or the abolition of our species' individualityforever.
Genre: Science Fiction
When struggling artist Alex defies warnings and undergoes a forbidden ritual to receive the rumored "Progenitor's Kiss" tattoo, they unleash an ancient symbiotic force bent on transcending the boundaries of human existence itself.
Reborn as the godlike entity Ankhrava, Alex finds themselves at the center of a metaphysical maelstrom. Their unstoppable new powersattract the terrified scrutiny of Noveris' rulers, pitting Alex against a cyborg vanguard determined to extinguish the cosmic threat by any means necessary.
But in truly chilling fashion, it's revealed that the sentient ink's agenda is to consume and "repattern" all reality across a higher dimensional existence. Its hypnotic fractal manifestations ignite an apocalyptic metamorphosis across the city's augmented citizens - some willingly embracing the delirious expansions of their consciousness, others tragically losing their humanity.
Caught between clashing augmented tribes and realities unraveling, Alex and a renegade xenobiologist make one final push to excise the cosmic organism. But in doing so, they catalyze the very transfiguration they sought to prevent - unleashing a tsunami of cosmic transcendence that may represent either the next step in human evolution...or the abolition of our species' individualityforever.
Genre: Science Fiction
Used availability for Charles Eugene Anderson's The Ink Beneath