The Series
Delver's Lament
His gift was finding the lost. His curse was knowing what had taken them.
The Premise
Mace Narien is an emotionally scarred dungeon delver and missing-persons investigator with psychometry — he feels the emotional residue of past traumas through his surroundings, dreading the day he becomes one of the monsters in the dark whose sadistic hungers, joys, and triumphs he intimately experiences. After a job gone wrong, he thought he'd found his retirement at the bottom of a bottle. He was wrong.
Lissandra isn’t what she claims, but she’s given him an offer he can’t refuse: a dangerous trek through the dread-laden wastes to a noble’s manor, to find those who went missing. He knows only fools and saints take this bargain. And he’s no saint.
A weak-to-strong progression fantasy with slow-reveal mystery, set in a world where the system is in the grain — not the grammar — of the story. LitRPG bones, noir voice, grimdark weight, with the occasional comic relief and romantic subplot along the way.
Genre
LitRPG · Progression · Grimdark Noir
Status
Ongoing · Five chapters a week on Royal Road
Home
Royal Road · Kindle Unlimited soon
His gift was finding the lost. His curse was knowing what had taken them.
Reading Order
The Books
Book One is serializing now on Royal Road. Additional volumes will be listed here as they move into writing and editing — no placeholders.
Where to Read
Find the book
Royal Road
Free to read, right now. Five chapters a week, comments open, follow to get updates in your feed.
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Kindle Unlimited
Book One arrives on Amazon as a full-length novel, included with Kindle Unlimited.
Coming soon
Patreon
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Questions answered
FAQ
Where can I start reading? +
Free on Royal Road: https://www.royalroad.com/fiction/145499/delvers-lament. Coming to Kindle Unlimited soon — drop your email on the newsletter and you'll hear the day it lands.
How often do new chapters post? +
Five chapters a week on Royal Road. That pace may shift during editing passes or when a volume moves toward Kindle release.
How long will the series be? +
Ten books total. The arc is outlined end-to-end; what changes between now and then is how we get there.
What is it, exactly — LitRPG, grimdark, or a detective story? +
All three. The genre tag is LitRPG with strong progression-fantasy bones, set in a grimdark noir world. Expect slow-reveal mystery, an emotionally scarred anti-hero lead, weak-to-strong progression, and the occasional comic relief and romantic subplot.
How is it different from most LitRPG? +
The system is in the grain of the world, not the grammar of it. This isn't a power-fantasy stat sheet — it's a detective with psychometry whose gift forces him to feel what the monsters felt, written in a noir register with grimdark weight.
Will there be an audiobook? +
Audio production is a plan for after Volume One completes its Kindle run. Newsletter subscribers get the first word when casting begins.
Do chapters get rewritten? +
Sometimes — rewrites on published chapters happen at the author's discretion. If you're re-reading a passage and something feels different, it probably is.