Ocean Grave

Ocean Grave is not a tale of ghosts-it is a manual for the living, a literary allegory about how cities lose their way and how they might be restored. The harbor at the heart of this novel has sunk deep into corruption. Time, passage, vows, and even grief have been sold as commodities. The drowned no longer speak, but their silence weighs heavily on the living. In these pages, law is not delivered as spectacle but practiced as daily habit: doors checked at breakfast, plates posted where everyone can read them, and rules written plainly enough for a soup line to see.
Justice here is sturdy, repetitive, and intentionally ordinary. A small crew arrives aboard the Vitriol to begin the work of rebuilding: Rhea, the advocate who makes law dull enough to be kind. Lysandra, the surveyor who carries a living map across her back. Hale, who steadies chains so lanes behave without cages. Cassian, the tally-keeper who counts only what deserves counting. Nix, who redraws awe where mouths have forgotten how.
Yolanthe, whose soup keeps conscience from fainting. Together, they reclaim the harbor from false devices-oath hooks, quota boards, whisper mills-tools that once pretended to be law. With the Archivist's knife, they test every joint for truth. With Elara's dot, they mark where honesty must bite. Devices that fail the test are labeled VOID / WASTE and placed in a public museum, quiet enough to teach by example.
Each chapter follows a civic liturgy-Housekeeping, Council, Proof & Conversion, Survey and Barrier, Returns, Seminary, Bureau-repeated until good governance becomes habit. The rhythm is intentional: safety comes not from heroes but from repetition, from rules posted and kept, from ordinary acts done well enough to be boring. Ocean Grave is a work of literary fiction, dystopian in its setting yet hopeful in its persistence.
It is an allegory of governance, bureaucracy, and mercy-where publicness is a craft, names are citizens not commodities, and decency survives best when it is so well posted you can find it before breakfast. For readers of allegorical novels, political fables, and experimental literary fiction, this book offers a slow, deliberate vision of civic repair-an ode to patience, honesty, and the small tools that keep a city alive.
Bring your "o" and your awe. The rest is soup and patience.