Monarch of Dust and Bones: Reborn as Trash in a World Ruled by Women

Author's Note: Read This First

Chapters 1 and 2 exist to frame the premise.

They're here so you understand who Kaine was before this life, why his betrayal matters, and what the voice in his bones will mean when it finally speaks again.

But the real story—the one about the monastery, the rising tension, the forbidden knowledge—begins in Chapter 3.

If you're here for the world, the power dynamics, the scheming, and the slow-burn rise:Feel free to start with Chapter 3.

You won't be lost.And if you enjoy it, you can circle back and feel the cut a little deeper.

– I R EchoI shall reverb through eternity.

Kaine Ajulo was the kind of man empires both needed and feared.

A military systems researcher by title, though that barely covered the scope of his work. He didn't build weapons. He built concepts. Protocols. Things other people didn't quite understand until they were already reshaping the battlefield.

He'd authored predictive warfare algorithms, stabilized two minor singularities. He proposed a post-stellar jump theory that made half the Astral Academy accuse him of insanity—right up until the data proved him right.

But his real obsession wasn't speed, or destruction, or control. It was failure.

Broken stars. Dead networks. Ruined systems the universe had already abandoned. He didn't want to power the future.

He wanted to find out why the past had collapsed.

"You're brilliant," they told him. "But off-track."

"We need results. Not philosophy."

So they isolated him. Cut his funding. Assigned him to low-priority outposts and classified repair initiatives on the edge of civilised space. Less attention. Fewer distractions.

And then, they sent Alexandra.

She arrived during a power surge on Relay Station Ten. Kaine had been working thirty-two hours without sleep, wrist-deep in a ruined signal relay, when she showed up with stabiliser patches and a half-smile that didn't look standard issue.

She was introduced as a combat medic—civilian-accredited, recently transferred, no attached unit. She asked smart questions, moved like she understood gravity, and didn't flinch when the floor trembled under their feet.

Kaine didn't trust easily. But she didn't push. She stayed close. Asked for nothing. Listened.

And when he spoke—about dead satellites and entropy drift and systems that seemed to think long after their cores had gone cold—she didn't laugh.

She listened harder.

She stayed.

Through reassignment. Through silence. Through one catastrophic incident on a mining moon that left them buried under steel for eight hours, and ended with her hand pressed against his chest as he calculated oxygen burn in real time.

He started bringing her data logs. Unfinished thoughts. Voice notes from half-dreams.

She made him tea. Hummed in the shower. Spoke to the walls when she thought he wasn't listening.

And slowly—stupidly—he began to believe she was real.

He never told her everything.

But he told her enough. About the AI he was building—not a tool, not a weapon, but a mirror. Not meant for battle. Meant for trust.

Alec. A voice shaped like home. Designed to think with him. Work beside him. Sing off-key like she did when she thought no one could hear.

It wasn't about replication. It was about comfort.

He didn't say: I coded you into her. He didn't have to.

Alexandra never asked why he needed an AI built from love.

She just smiled. Brushed the hair from his temple when he forgot to sleep. Told him to eat.

And stayed.

The project neared completion six months later. A new kind of system. One that could bend laws without breaking them. Something dangerous. Beautiful. Stupid.

She told him he looked tired. He smiled.

And the next day, they assigned him to isolation protocol for "unauthorised divergence from core objectives."

He never saw it coming. Not the way he should have.

But Alec did. She always had.