The Laughter from the Dark

Before the world knew war, before civilizations rose and fell, before humanity recorded its first history, something ancient and terrible was already laughing.The Laughter from the Dark is narrated by Death himself and the six other Absolutes who witness the unfolding of all things: Change, Time, Life, Will, Destiny, and Providence. Together, they bear witness to the darkest chapters of human history, chapters never written down, because those who survived were too afraid to remember.The First SonThe first murderer, history’s original exile, kills his brother out of envy and earns a life of wandering. In the wilderness he meets Lamashtu, a healer who poisoned the children of those who mocked her grief. Together they are perfectly, terribly matched. He builds her a city. He does not realize what he has built until it is far too late.The City That Should Not Have SurvivedGenerations pass. The city grows in cruelty and forbidden knowledge. Its people enter arrangements with fallen angels, birth giants, build machines that weaponize fear, and carve temples beneath the earth for rituals too dark to name. When a prophet arrives warning of coming judgment, they do not repent. They prepare. When the floodwaters rise, the Laughing People do not drown.They vanish.The Dark ExpanseThey emerge in a lightless realm between dimensions where perpetual sound drills into the mind and corrupts the soul. Over centuries, their skin fades to ash, their eyes burn yellow, their smiles stretch past the natural lines of their faces. Their laughter becomes something that splinters courage and unravels the minds of all who hear it.They are no longer the Laughing People.They are the Ones Who Laugh.The ReturnWhen they tear their way back into the world, civilizations fall overnight. It falls to one man to do what no one else will attempt. Gilgamesh, prince of Uruk, goes into the mountains alone to seek an alliance with the creatures his people fear most. What he finds beneath the ice is only the beginning, and what comes through the mountain from another world entirely will change everything.What follows are battles that became legends. Legends that became myths. Myths that humanity eventually dismissed as stories.They were not stories.Defeated, yes. Destroyed? Never. When you hear laughter in the dark, remember why we stand together.The Court has forgotten. So has humanity.They are still out there. And they are nowhere near finished.The Laughter from the Dark is the prequel to A Light in the Darkness and The Witch-Bane, and the cosmological foundation of the entire Death Keeper Chronicles saga.