House of Stone is not set in any time period, nor does it find itself rooted in any place or culture, though, many references have been made implying that this place and its people belong to a future remnant version of the United States of America, broken and reduced to a city-state located in the desert.

The story begins with the death of the Father, ruler of the House of Stone, at the hands of his two eldest sons, The First Born and The Second Sun.

The First Born was born intersex but forced to present as male by The Father and was ritualistically beaten as a child to be made strong as is the tradition for every first born son of the House of Stone. At the age of thirteen, The First Born became mute, obeying every directive by The Father without question. The First Born never wanted The Father’s Throne but sealed their emotional world off within the persona of the frightening warrior killer prince. 

For seven years, The Second Sun has plotted for his own ascension to the Father’s throne. Their kingdom, a once great and feared nation, has gradually been reduced to a withering city-state whose land has been sold off, traded away, and its people demoralized by the outside World Union.

The kingdom is the last of its kind, a symbol of old-world ideas and a place controlled by fear and acts of violence. The First Born and The Second Sun are a codependent brotherhood in which one fulfills the needs of the other. The Second Sun defers to The First Born for brute strength and action. The First Born defers to The Second Sun for tactics, leadership, and will. The two brothers pledged their allegiance to one another as adolescents, when The Second Sun tried to take his own life and was saved by his brother, The First Born.

It was during this moment of trauma, that The Second Sun developed a second personality; a god-complex self which then fostered the weaker, more volatile Second Sun in the development of a new vision and destiny for himself and his country.

Now, they have acted on the plot of The Second Sun, and The Father is dead. In the wake of his murder, the two brothers immediately begin the master plan of The Second Sun to reclaim the land that was taken from them, and rebuild and resurrect their empire to the glory and power of its former state.

In the aftermath of a brutal attack on a neighboring city, The First Born discovers The Child, a small girl of two years hiding in the ashes of her dead home. The First Born takes The Child back with them and secretly raises her as their own. He never knew his mother, and in his yearnings to have known her, becomes the mother of their dreams for this small child.

It is with this surrogate daughter, that they begin to speak again. The only other person who knows of this child is The Black Sister who watches over the well-being of her brother and son, The First Born. She resolves to keep the child a secret from The Second Sun.

Both The First Born and The Black Sister are loyal members of their house and have served The Father up until his death. Now, they both begin to look inward, in an attempt to decipher and untangle the complex web of conflicting emotions as their fate unfolds before them. 

During this time, news of their exploits spreads across the land and oceans, inevitably attracting the attention of the World Union, and also, the long lost Little Brother, third son of The Father, cast out years ago to wander the land as a vagrant of shame and self-loathing for being homosexual. 

As a child, The Little Brother was forced to drown a young boy with whom he was discovered lying naked by The Father. This violent rejection of The Little Brother permanently damaged the psyche of the child and that trauma evolved into a pathology that was far more savage and brutal. The Little Brother would suffocate every lover he would seek out like a predator seeks its prey.

As tensions build due to failed acts of diplomacy by the WU, The Little Brother returns home, his intentions unclear to him but his unsavory lust dictating his actions all the while. He comes to his brothers only after talking with The Black Sister one night and decides to help them in their efforts to rebuild their country.

Hearing of her Father’s death, The Blue Sister, youngest of the five, also returns home. When she was a child, The Father scarred her face out of spite, when she would not submit to his will to molest her. Under cover of darkness, she ran from home, aided by The First Born and for twenty-two years, travelled the earth, bottling her tears for the day when she could water the flowers on The Father’s grave. She had learned to overcome her anger, forgiving The Father and using her suffering as the means by which she must survive and transcend her reality. 

As an impending sense of doom grows, each sibling comes to terms with their suffering, seeking atonement, salvation, redemption, freedom, and death through their shared sense of fatalism.