Cirice Gray @House of the Underworld out now!

@ciricegray.itch.io

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writing (mostly) lesbian sff | Astraea Falls coming 2026 | https://ciricegray.itch.io/ | patreon: https://patreon.com/ciricegray pfp by @mangomakes.bsky.social

This is a close up of the heron baby and it's like if you stuck a novelty beak and some regular bird-sized feet on a wad of cat hair
Hell Maiden screenshot featuring Virgil and Ovid Virgil to Ovid: And I know you can't sleep without Homer's lullabies and—
Mythos tooltip from Hell Maiden: "In the afterlife, all human souls are granted Her likeness: that of a woman."
A giant banyan tree
Prologue: Pewter 1 One: Thresholds 12 Two: Thymos 41 Three: Adequate 58 Four: Ananke 73 Five: Kataklysmos 92 Six: Sanctuary 113 Seven: Breach 131 Eight: Velveting 151 Nine: Demarcation 174 Ten: Himeros 195 Eleven: Faith, Blood and Ruin 221 Interlude: Substrate 249 Twelve: Kneel 270 Thirteen: Gambit 292 Fourteen: Bare 313 Fifteen: Archival 330 Sixteen: Seal 351 Seventeen: Antistrophe 377 Eighteen: Flowerbed 397 Interlude: Glass 421 Nineteen: Palimpsest 446 Twenty: Spider Lily 471 Twenty-One: Threnody 496 Twenty-Two: Nadir 511 Twenty-Three: Zenith 525 Twenty-Four: Terminus 534 Epilogue: Two Hundred and Six 550
The leash is a slip of braided silk that Cedalion put in her hand and folded her fingers around. Madalithea holds it as one would scruff a cat—certain of imminent consequence. The Hound sits before her on the chamber floor, copper-shot hair falling free to her hips, golden eyes turned up with an expression of grave attentiveness. “Do we have to… to practice now?” The acolytes whispers. “No better time than the present.” Cedalion’s smile is anything but innocent. “Go one then, command me.” “Ho-honored pilot…” Madalithea holds tight the locket and leaf at her throat. “Uhm…” “Mm?” Cedalion intones. She lowers her voice as if to spare anyone from hearing it. “Please bark.”
House of the Underworld “My father, look at me, and kiss me once, That I may take this memory at least Unto the grave with me, if I must die” —Iphigenia in Aulis by Euripides (trans. by Florence Stawell)
Google docs word count display for House of the Underworld Word Count Pages 451 Words 193555 Characters 1113645 Characters excluding spaces 925548
Her wrist is in my hands. Heat burns my ears. Mada, my Mada, smells like a wet dog. Nausea makes a home in my throat, too stiff and thick I cannot swallow it down. Cedalion? Hound of our Lord?! I think I’m going to kill her. I’ll fold her up and squish her until she stops breathing and then maybe she’ll stop putting herself in these awful situations. Visited by a God? Fucked until she needs medicine by a Hound of our Lord? I cannot suffer this any longer. Yes, I will drive her soul from this mortal realm and place her remains upon my ritual altar where they will be mine for all time. It’s her voice, I think. I know that makes me like the rest of them, every aspirant and sister and hierophant and fair weather worshiper and reveler that passes by Meténeion. I am predictable, replaceable. I am no Hound of Hades. Who am I kidding? Her skin— has it always been so gentle, so supple?— in my hands is a patchwork of colors from some woman who doesn’t even know her. Who could never claim to know her like I do. Like bone knows its own marrow— she is the softness I have grown up holding. I could never harm her like this. My teeth are incapable of finding purchase this deep. She shifts, again and again as we talk, pulling her shorts down. She is keeping something from me, protecting me in her own way from some true horror. Is that what she likes? I could not bear to see it. My hands trace the bruises up her thighs anyway. The trail of evidence, of pain and pleasure. Her soil-brown eyes follow mine. “Mada,” I say. “Take your shorts off.” “W-what?” “You’re hiding something from me. We’ve been Sisters for ten years. Secrets are untoward.” Greed overwhelms my self-preservation. I must know it. The shape of their love. As if by knowing its dimensions I could construct a quarantine. I wave the lie of the bandage and the antibacterial and keep my voice even. “Please, I just want to help.” I am a lecher, a voyeur. Hades punish me, but I must know. “… alright.”
Book cover for House of the Underworld by Cirice Gray and Maria Ying. Two nearly identical figures face each other in mirrored symmetry, both have vibrant red hair and freckles, one has brown eyes, the other gray. Above, in the background, a golden sunburst and a pale crescent moon loom over and illuminate them both.
She has me pinned against the wall outside the House of the Underworld, looming close enough that I can smell her: fresh baked sweets, caramelization. And rising alongside the panic: admiration. Thrill. The intoxicating weight of her attention, even like this. Especially like this. She is looking at me, only at me, and some wretched part of me sings with it even as the rest of me shakes. "My lady!" My voice is desperate and adoring and terrified. Confusion, then disgust, neither of it diminishes the perfect curve of her jaw, the way her hair catches the light of the Underworld and bears it with cold, lunar beauty. Her mouth is a wound, red lips pulled tight over a sneer. She is all sharp edge and intense, unparalleled glory. There is an insane, wild part of me that is possessed with the notion of pressing my mouth against her every angle until I bleed. "Oh, screw you," Persephone says, and releases me. My knees unlock. I slide down the wall, rough basalt catching at my vestments. She's already turning away, disappearing into the dark between the massive doors without so much as a backward glance. The cold rushes in where her heat lingers, and I'm left gasping against stone, trying to understand.This isn't natural.
The door crashes open. A man storms through—tall, broad-shouldered, with umber skin and burnt auburn hair, pulled back from a face beautiful enough to draw blood. The green of his eyes catches the light as he fixates on me. “Do you have any idea,” his words scathe, “what the hell you’ve done?” I scramble back until I fall out of my chair, teacup forgotten, it shatters against the floor in a spray of porcelain and chamomile. He could kill me—this Mark Three could pull me apart while I sit, stunned by his eyes—and no one would stop him… could anyone here stop him? When I was thirteen I put up a poster of him on the wall of my room: Adrastus, Persephone’s brother, the Mark Three that showed everyone at the Agoge, the pilot’s school, that a clone could best any mortal and go on to become a Banner-class pilot. I remember thinking he was cute. My mother tore it down when she saw it, disgusted that I would lust over a clone, her voice sharp with the particular venom she reserved for my worst transgressions. There’s nothing cute about the mask of rage he wears right now.
‪milkweed.bsky.social‬ @milkweed.bsky.social‬ Well they won’t be kidnapping children off the streets and busting into people’s houses. So, I’ll take it.
House of the Underworld As gods combat monsters and demigods rise, mortals must still navigate the darkness of Elysium. A clone in the Court of Light faces unimaginable horror while a hopeful Sister Madalithea is summoned to serve at the House of the Underworld In the twinned estate of Artemis and Apollo, a nameless girl wakes fully formed into a world she doesn't understand. She is hunted through a pale jungle, made to watch her sisters fall one by one. When she survives, the reward is not freedom, but a cage. Madalithea has dreamed of nothing greater than serving the god she adores. A summons to Lord Hades estate should be the fulfillment of everything faith has promised—but she soon finds herself attending a volatile, newly ascended Persephone, and behind her eyes a voice stirs. A companion to The Persephone Effect, House of the Underworld turns its gaze from the powerful to the powerless—the mortal bodies beneath the gods' feet, the lives spent and discarded in the margins of divine ambition. This is the darkness from which Elysium's lords avert their gaze.
A promotional image for "Flower of the Underworld" by Cirice Gray. Against a dark blue, atmospheric background, a Kindle e-reader displays the book's cover: a stylized illustration of a young woman with long red hair, wearing a black robe trimmed in gold, standing before a glowing full moon with tall white spires behind her. She wears a golden cypress leaf-shaped pendant. The cover's art deco border is rendered in muted gold and olive tones. To the left of the device, white text reads: "In the Underworld, a flower blooms…" followed by the description "A transfem bisexual sapphic sci-fi romantasy in a brutal cyberpunk city ruled by merciless gods."
Book cover for House of the Underworld by Cirice Gray and Maria Ying. Two nearly identical figures face each other in mirrored symmetry, both have vibrant red hair and freckles, one has brown eyes, the other gray. Above, in the background, a golden sunburst and a pale crescent moon loom over and illuminate them both.
Zeus has been struck down, and Elysium stands on the cusp of destruction. In this tumult, Persephone is wounded but not yet defeated. A presence grows within her that should not be. She has a chance at the goal she’s strived toward all along: godhood itself. But just as likely, she could lose everything. Now she must adapt—or drown. Hades, head heavy with her sister's crown, labors to bring the gods to order and keep them united as a killer haunts the city, capable of dispatching mortals and gods alike. Twin gods Artemis and Apollo grow increasingly erratic, hinting at a scheme that may no longer align them with the survival of Elysium. In the battle for Olympus, the gods must unearth the secrets left behind by their makers—who may not, after all, be entirely gone... This book is part of the Gunmetal Olympus series. Cover art by Rashed AlAkroka. Further reading The story of Sister Madalithea can be found in Flower of the Underworld and continued in House of the Underworld, the latter of which serves as a sister novel to The Persephone Effect.
Enormous thanks to Cirice Gray, creator of Sister Madalithea, for allowing us to incorporate Madalithea into the story as well as consulting on the story as a whole. Cirice, you are an absolute light in the darkness and we could not have done it without you.
Currently published and available for pre-order books from https://ciricegray.itch.io/ From left to right: Astraea Falls, House of the Underworld, Flower of the Underworld
Wirbel from Frieren season 2