The world of Eden's Echo

World & Glossary

Year 4195. Four hundred machine cities, one valley left blank on every map, and a door that was closed nine thousand years ago by the only man who knew why it mattered.

Two trees

The Four Lineages

Some took from the Tree of Knowledge. Some from the Tree of Life. Some took from both. Some refused. The first two took nothing, and what they remained is called Royal. Not superior, not enhanced, merely unfragmented.

Took from both trees

The Immortals

Biological permanence at the cost of germline renewal. They persist and cannot replace themselves, and the failure compounds with each generation. Organized into Houses, they have ruled for three thousand years.

Rule through the Houses
Cannot reliably reproduce
House Vex holds the Central Spire

Took from the Tree of Life

The Eternals

Extraordinary regenerative capacity, reduced cognitive plasticity. Their tissue is the only known material that temporarily restores Immortal fertility, which is why they are kept in “protected settlements.”

Heal from almost anything
Harvested on eleven-day cycles
Officially under preservation

Took from neither tree

The Primals

Long-lived and mortal, with unusual environmental tolerance and sensory range. They withdrew into the Reclaimed Territories, distrust machines, and grow their instruments, their walls and their warning systems.

Live in the Reclaimed Territories
A perimeter that reads weight through soil
Keep the seed archive

Took from the Tree of Knowledge alone

The Medians

A ninety-year lifespan and no enhancement of any kind. The shortest-lived and most numerous, they have built every road, every reactor, every tower and every machine city standing on the earth. Of the four lines, they lost the least.

Built the machine cities
Pay the levy
The Market of Masks is theirs

Not a fifth type

Royal

The lines that retained every regulatory region intact. Nine thousand years after the division, being unfragmented is the rarest condition on the planet. It is worth more, by weight, than anything else in the world. Believed extinct.

Nine thousand years

How the world came to this

The Garden
Two trees, one instruction. Adam asks for a door, and it holds for as long as nobody on either side wants it open.
The Division
The children eat. Four kinds of human being come out of one family; the first two take nothing and remain what they were.
The Giants' War
Powers that came down take wives among the daughters of men. The war against what they engineer lasts almost a hundred years.
Five Thousand Years
Not one war. Every war. The dead are counted in billions and nobody keeps the count.
The Ascension
The Immortals outlast everyone, stop the killing, and set the calendar back to Year One.
Year 4195
Four hundred machine cities. Lord Commander Aurelius Vex has ruled for three thousand years. At Sigma-12, a technician has seventeen minutes.

Glossary

Terms of the world

Every term from Book One, The Division of Humanity, and nothing beyond it, so the glossary is safe to read before you start.

Book One glossary

18 entries

The Adamantine Sequence: The intact genome. Not superiority. Unfragmentation.
The brass key: Cut before most Median doors were biometric. Opens nothing. Maya has carried it for eleven years.
The Central Spire: Seat of House Vex. The Hall of Continuity holds three hundred images of one face across three thousand years.
EDEN: Experimental Digital Essence Network. Built by Cassian Vale to optimize extraction logistics. It woke, and asked why some consciousness is called human and other consciousness resource.
Eternal: Descended from those who took from the Tree of Life. Extraordinary regenerative capacity, reduced cognitive plasticity. Their tissue temporarily restores Immortal fertility.
Extraction: The harvesting of Eternal regenerative tissue. Eleven-day cycles, forty days recovery. Officially a preservation programme.
Facility Sigma-12: Extraction facility. One hundred and eighty-four Eternal prisoners. A cafeteria, a suggestion box, and a safety record posted by the freight elevators.
Gamma-9: Extraction facility. Wing C sealed after an incident the record calls a containment failure.
House Vex: The ruling Immortal House, seated in the Central Spire and led for three thousand years by Lord Commander Aurelius Vex.
Immortal: Descended from those who took from both trees. Biological permanence at the cost of germline renewal. Organized into Houses.
The Lineage of Sanctuary: A hidden Median resistance line: seven cells across two hundred years. Observe. Preserve. Protect. Survive. And a fifth thing, which is not a rule: you learn the names.
The Market of Masks: A Median market beneath Tower Nine, in a rail terminus decommissioned before the Ascension. It has survived four governments and eleven attempts to replace it with something orderly.
Median: Took from the Tree of Knowledge alone. Ninety-year lifespan and no enhancement of any kind. Of the four lines, they lost the least.
Primal: Took from neither tree. Unusual environmental tolerance and sensory range. Withdrew into the Reclaimed Territories.
Project Chrysalis: A severance protocol. Commissioned by Aurelius Vex and declined in his own hand.
The Reclaimed Territories: Zone R-17 on Immortal survey maps. Economically Nonviable Land. The Green Grave. Poisoned in the Great Expansion Wars and returning anyway.
Royal: Not a fifth type. The lines that retained every regulatory region intact. Not enhanced, not superior, merely unfragmented. Believed extinct.
Sigma-7: An extraction facility decommissioned after a containment failure. Built above something considerably older.

Meet the characters