Returning to the Board: Beginning Book Two of The World Below

It’s a strange and powerful feeling—returning to the world I built twenty years ago and watching it grow sharper with every word. When I began The World Below, I had no idea what it would become. I only knew the shape of a world I couldn’t forget: a fractured planet named Caldereth, eight Houses locked in ritual war, and an ancient, unfathomable presence that remembers the future.

Book One, The Fighting 57th, tells the story of Delta-57, a squad of soldiers caught in something far larger than themselves. It began as war fiction, but somewhere along the way, it became prophecy, memory, and echo. What started as a story of survival in the dirt becomes a story about power—who controls it, who suffers under it, and what it costs to defy it.

Now, I’ve begun writing Book Two.

This time, the stakes are different—not just planetary, but cosmic. The war hasn’t ended. The Board has not stilled. But the pieces move in ways no one—not even the god who remembers—can fully predict. And one of those pieces, Sora Virelle, is no longer content to be moved.

If Book One was about survival, Book Two is about disruption. The pattern is breaking. Old loyalties are unraveling. Ancient fail-safes—forgotten even by those who built them—are awakening beneath Caldereth’s soil. There are truths buried deeper than ruins, and consequences older than memory. And Sora? She’s no longer simply obeying orders.

She’s starting to ask the wrong questions.

What to Expect in Book Two:

• The mystery of the Divergence Pool and why it was never meant to succeed

• New moves at The Board—and new absences that shift the balance

• The emergence of Vestige Thirteen, the breakaway faction that believes the god can be unmade

• Hidden technology, fractured timelines, and the question no one wants answered:
  What happens if Arath-Bar forgets?

This isn’t just a continuation. It’s an escalation. And for those who’ve been reading from the beginning, thank you. The story only gets deeper from here.

Back to Caldereth we go.

— J.A. Raithe