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LockedMarch 8, 1287 BC
In the dense forests of the Western Ghats, Devraj of Magadha leads an expedition to capture what local hunters call "black gold" — melanistic leopard cubs, rare even among the region's abundant wildlife. Four cubs from two separate litters will begin a journey that transforms them from exotic commodities into the ancestors of something far more dangerous.
LockedApril 8, 1287 BC
The four cubs survive the crossing. In Andhakara's torch-lit compound, Devraj presents his prizes to his fellow Guardians. None of them can know that these mewling, black-furred creatures will outlast everything they build — and become something their descendants cannot control.
April 3, 2026 AD
Thirteen hundred years before Christ was born, a man with claw marks down his back carries a sack of four mewling leopard cubs through a tear in reality and into another dimension. He collapses on the other side. His legs give out on the packed earth of a settlement called Andhakara. His vision greys. His wounds, wrapped in cloth and forest herbs by trackers who knew better than to ask questions, have reopened. Blood seeps through the bandages. People are shouting. Hands are gripping his arms to keep him upright. He manages one sentence before he loses consciousness: "The cubs. Take the cubs. The enclosures." Four lives, torn from their mothers in the Western Ghats of India, carried across the boundary between worlds by a man who nearly died to get them. They don't know where they are. They don't know that the forests of their birth are not merely miles away but dimensions removed. They know only that they are hungry, and frightened, and surrounded by scents that bear no relationship to anything they've ever experienced. They will change everything. That's the moment.
LockedJune 3, 1222 BC
Two years since Vikram's death. Andhakara is dying — no Earth connection, no trade leverage, no future. The remaining population prepares to scatter to other settlements. But what do you do with fifteen adult leopards and their cubs when there is no one left to feed them, no one left to guard them, and no way to take them where you're going?
LockedThey move in packs. They hunt in darkness. They don't kill for food—they kill because the kill itself is the point. Clivilius has many dangers, but few inspire the same primal terror. The shadow panthers have been hunting these lands longer than anyone can remember.
July 28, 2018 AD
It followed prey through the light and found itself somewhere wrong. The air tasted of poison. The darkness was never complete. But the hunter was still a hunter, and this strange world was full of soft things that had never learned to fear what moved in the night.
October 7, 1767 AD
In the fifth year of New Edinburgh's existence, Elspeth Stewart and Captain Angus MacTavish create something new — a unit of warriors trained not for the formations and siegecraft of European warfare, but for the stalking patience of Highland hunters and the absolute darkness of Clivilius nights. The Chewbathian Hunters will become legend, but legend is built from blood and failure and the hard lessons that only survival can teach. These are the years when the methods are forged, when the traditions begin, and when young warriors learn what it means to hunt creatures that hunt back.
LockedSeptember 17, 1224 BC
Sixty-three years since the leopards arrived. The other four Guardians lost to age and illness over the preceding decades. Vikram — the last remaining Guardian, the only one who can still open the Portal — enters the enclosure of a male leopard he has known since its birth. He does not leave alive.
July 28, 2018 AD
The pack had been watching for days. New prey had arrived—soft, slow, unaware of the rules. On the night of 27 July, five shadows descended on the settlement the prey called Bixbus. By morning, two of the pack would never hunt again.
October 12, 185 AD
For three generations, Zarabad coexisted with the creatures in the darkness beyond its walls. Livestock taken. The occasional attack repelled. An uneasy balance maintained through vigilance and firelight. Then seven shadows moved as one, and forty-three people learned that coexistence had always been an illusion.
End of list
Jamie Greyson was shoved through a Portal into a dimension that shouldn't exist, by a partner he no longer trusts. In the dust and desperation of Clivilius, the son he'd only just begun to know arrives with a slit throat and no heartbeat. The lagoon brings Joel back. But when Jamie begs for a second miracle, Clivilius answers with silence. Some debts, it seems, are only paid once.
When a series of disappearances grips Tasmania’s remote edges, Detective Sarah Lahey is drawn into a case that threatens to unravel her—professionally and personally. As tensions flare with fellow detective Karl Jenkins, trust becomes a gamble neither can afford. In the search for truth, they’ll find the shadows run deeper than they imagined. Into the Dark is a haunting thriller about loyalty, obsession, and the cost of stepping beyond the light.
Gladys Cramer wasn’t looking for trouble—just a quiet glass of red and maybe a cat that actually came when called. But when a Portal opens, a body turns up, and a man with too many secrets begs her trust, Gladys is pulled into something vast, strange, and far too dangerous. She doesn’t know the rules. She doesn’t want the job. Dryly funny, quietly furious, and not at all qualified—Gladys is about to learn that staying out of it doesn’t mean staying safe.
Joel Gibbons had never been anywhere. Hadn't finished school. Hadn't met his father. Hadn't done much except show up for his mum and hope that counted for something. A passport application changed everything—a name on a birth certificate, a coincidence that put him in the wrong place, and a death he didn't see coming. Joel should have stayed dead. Instead, he woke in glowing water—claimed before he even drew breath—gasping back to life with three words branded somewhere deeper than skin. You are mine.
Luke Smith's world transforms with the discovery of a cryptic device, thrusting him into the guardianship of destiny itself. His charismatic charm and unpredictable decisions now carry weight beyond imagination, balancing on the razor's edge between salvation and destruction. Embracing his role as a Guardian, Luke faces the paradox of power: the very force that defends also threatens to annihilate. As shadows gather and the fabric of reality strains, Luke must navigate the consequences of his actions, unaware that a looming challenge will test the very core of his resolve.
Men are vanishing across Tasmania, and Detective Senior Constable Karl Jenkins is running out of time, patience, and sanity. Every lead points to Luke Smith—but proving it means crossing lines Karl can't uncross. He breaks into houses without warrants. He sees faces in windows that shouldn't be there. He chases the wine-soaked Gladys Cramer through high-speed pursuits only for her to slip away. His partner becomes collateral damage. His sergeant's warnings go ignored. Karl knows something monstrous is happening on this island, and he'll tear through every boundary to expose it. Even if it destroys him.
Thrown into an unfamiliar world with nothing but her medical kit and a backlog of questions, Dr. Glenda De Bruyn never asked to lead. But when strangers start arriving—wounded, lost, and dangerous—triage becomes survival. Each decision risks more than a life; it tests what remains of her logic, loyalty, and control. As the lines blur between science and myth, Glenda must confront not only the fractures in her patients—but the ones inside herself. In Clivilius, everyone bleeds. Not everyone gets patched up.