The novel centres on a group of ex-Marines who on a search and rescue mission come face to face with an unpredented enemy — an entity that represents, in the author's words, "ultimate terror.” The struggle for survival they must engage pits not only their fate but the future of humanity in the balance.

I wanted to imagine what original terror might look like, in frequency if not in form. Ostensibly a head or a mask, rendered as a lattice or a cage, I intended in this custom illustration to create a sense of impending dread, more than to represent something physically defined as such. I wanted to leave open whether the entity at the centre of the book is an organic being, a metaphysical entity, or a non-organic force or assemblage. Of this world, of another world, or of all possible worlds?

Within the mask — if that is what it is — in the lower half appears a woeful human head or face, caged within the unthinkable.

This is my first book cover contest on 99designs.