Embers of the Empire

The Lothlian Empire is a corpse, and the Wyrm Lords have come to feast. Its borders have collapsed into ash and bone, leaving only the frontier of the Reaves against an encroaching dark.

In the storm-lashed North, Válka secured her future with a blade, killing her own brother in legal combat to claim the title he coveted: Skäl Lord, commander of the Islekarl's fleet. But her victory is hollow. To stabilize the succession, her father demands a political betrothal to a man she despises. Granted one last raid before the marriage binds her, she must choose a gilded cage or a bloodier destiny.

Garos is a Reaver Laird fighting a war of cold math. To stave off annihilation, he enforces the Flesh Tithe, a blood-price paid by his people to keep the Wyrm Lords at bay. But the frontier is fracturing: a slave-city in revolt, an outpost refusing the Tithe, the Nothman fleet at his shores. To save the Reaves, he must tread the line between savior and monster.

At the world's end, Torbane, a disgraced Sworn Bearer of the White Flame, drowns his past in a bottle. When miners vanish beneath the outpost of Garve, the mystery draws him underground, into a terror that should not exist: a secret with the power to reignite a war for the fallen empire's soul.

What rises from the embers will be decided in blood, steel, and the terrible cost of survival.