Last updated on September 15, 2025
This started because of a character that came to mind. The Saint is someone who always wins trial by combat and thus, is always innocent. Except, of course, he’s not. Think of the someone with all of the elements of narcissism and anti-social, with a few traits borrowed but never returned from other personality disorders, all rolled up into a knight of the realm. He has the strength to always win in the archaic manner, the favor of the gods, and the morals of a sinner.
Then I needed a world where he, the natural hero, could be featured. But the world needs to match this fractured image. We usually encounter stories where the good guys always win, especially in fantasy novels. I think this is why I love the Stormlight Archives, because, well. If you get to the end of book five, you will know.
I pick up the story after the prophecy about the end of the world has come true. Think of it as if Frodo had kept the ring. The heroes lost. There are some twist and turns to come, of course, but the story picks up as the darkness from the Unmoon beings to spread across the land. Humans and other species, like the Beastfolk, are on an exodus to a distant land across the great sea. But we have a group of people who eventually assemble, including The Saint, who decides that maybe the prophecy didn’t fail, just the heroes. Pesky people who still believe in religion and all. Anyway, I have the start of the dark epic fantasy trilogy. I am just focused on other things at the moment.
Here are the characters of the hero group:
The Paladin: failed faith
The Saint: hollow justice
The Paintaker: broken mercy
The Beastfolk: desecrated nature
The Refugee: maimed future
The Apprentice: corrupted legacy
As you can see, it intends to be a rather dark epic fantasy. And just wait until you read about the princesses of the exodus group.
And this is what I would see as the “back of the book” synopsis:
When the light of Caelir failed, prophecy itself proved a lie. Velkyn—the hidden un-moon—rose in the heavens, spilling a tide of darkness that devoured gods, kingdoms, and hope alike.
Tharic, once a paladin bound by oath and faith, has forsaken his vows. Haunted by failure and loss, he stumbles into a band of unlikely survivors: a beastfolk exile, two broken youths, and a figure called the Saint whose innocence conceals something far darker. Together they are drawn back toward the very heart of ruin, Tel Daraneth, where whispers claim a forgotten god still lingers.
Meanwhile, far from the spreading shadow, a caravan of refugees presses toward a mythic island, led by a princess who must decide whether she is guide, queen, or deceiver. Behind them march armies, houses, and powers desperate to claim dominion over what remains of the dying world.
In a land where truth is weapon and memory a curse, the choice is no longer between light and darkness—but between survival and surrender, hope and betrayal.
Chapter 1….
Drauthen’s Crown was an ancient, jagged peak often shrouded in mist, named for a forgotten hermit-king said to have died gazing at the stars, waiting for a god that never came. It was fitting, then, as the paladin rose, following the sun’s glow, which grew feebler as the days passed. This hill wasn’t especially impressive, nothing like the mountains from which he had come, either by birth or a month ago. Below, the ravine’s rivers thundered, their white-frothed currents carving through stone, whispering to him—jump, end it, let the waters claim your pain. Yet guilt, heavier than the steel encasing him, bound him to life. Shame demanded he endure, each dawn a fresh sentence. If there was a hell, it paled beside the torment of his existence.
He had ridden horse after horse for a month. This one was still winded from the last 30 miles, still winded from a week of hard pacing, carrying a knight in full armor. She was a spotted gray with a black mane. Not impressive, not a steed of the highborn. She had been stolen from a farm a week ago; now – was it a week ago? Yes, a week ago – because neither the dead farmer nor the farmer’s family, who was very much alive, would have need of her except to escape what was coming. He needed her more, he told himself. He needed to leave, to run, to hide. To escape. So he did.
The dawn air bit his lungs, sharp with altitude’s chill, his tears freezing to his wind-burned face. He no longer fought them. They fell, unbidden, as inevitable as the ruin awaiting Caelir below. His failure. Their failure. The failure of all things, etched into the marrow of the world.
He looked at the unmoon, Velkyn, suspended not in the sky but high over Thaurgomath — the Black Throat in the old tongue, a hollowed, volcanic peak from which Velkryn’s corruption first bled into Caelir. Legends claim its cavernous heart once held a god’s tomb, now twisted into a throne of ash and void. Somehow in the cacophony of the Fall he had risen higher. He could see the peak, or maybe that was his imagination. Regardless, he and the rest of the world could see Velkyn pouring the darkness into the world through it.
For the first time since he’d stood in that cursed throne room, Tharic tore at his armor. His gloves, scarred by blades he’d parried, sailed into the ravine’s depths. He didn’t wait for their splash. Forearm plates followed, then leg guards, each piece shed like a confession. The cape, tattered and bloodstained, fluttered briefly before sinking. His helmet he hurled skyward, its arc mocking Velkyn before plunging to the dark waters below. Only the breastplate remained, its wren sigil—emblem of his shattered house—gleaming dully. He clawed at the straps, but his arms, aching from weeks of strain or fused by Vael’Dhannar’s desert sun, refused to yield. The metal clung like a curse. Later, he thought, exhaustion dulling his resolve. Later.
The cape fluttered in the wind, the bright gold embroidered wren seeming to enjoy the red leather cape as if it had finally been granted wings. The symbol of a house that spanned a thousand years. His house was no more. Soon, every House and great Clan on Caelir would face the same fate. Ruin and destruction awaited, with their eldest sons dead or maimed by the darkness seeping across the land.
He was free, save the breastplate, of anything that reminded him of the paladin he once had been. In Caelir’s brighter days, a paladin was a sworn blade of the divine, bound by the mantle and the moon to uphold a world where light held sway. They were not mere warriors but beacons of vow-forged purpose, their hearts steeled by oaths to protect the fragile balance of life against encroaching shadows. For the House of Wren, the paladin bore the sigil of a bird small yet unyielding, its wings a promise of hope rising through storm. Clad in armor that sang of ancient smiths, they walked as emissaries of gods now silent, their voices lifting prayers to the two moons that once blessed the land.
A paladin’s strength lay not in steel but in conviction, their blades cutting only where righteousness demanded. They stood sentinel over Caelir’s hearths, their presence a bulwark against chaos in times when fields bloomed and skies gleamed. But with Velkyn’s rise—a new unmoon, a void devouring light—their oaths no longer mattered. Tharic, the once great prince of a once great house, no longer mattered. Far below him lay his armor at the bottom of the river, to rust and rot, carried away by the force of water. What remained was a man defeated, broken. With that thought, the only thing left to do was to get rid of the one last thing that bore witness to everything he once was.
His sword.
It has belonged to his father, and to his father’s father before him. The steel had come from the Kiraithe Spine Mountains, with the blade crafted over decades by monks who worshipped the goddess of war, Thanyrra Bloodveil. The hilt, made of leather from a múrak, fit neatly in his hand. It was designed for one family, and it was said that anyone in that family could easily wield it. But today, it felt as heavy as stone. He lifted it up, the blade gleaming in the sun as if whispering a plea not to be let go. He remembered better days, leading armies against each of the dark Houses, watching them fall one by one, just as the prophecy had foretold. Using it to save lives came to mind. But a memory flashed, as if lightning struck him—the memory of a moment when the sword had failed, and the world ended. With a shout, whether of anger, hurt, or whatever it is that soldiers do when they retreat from their minds, he threw the sword down the same path his armor had trod.
He gazed down the hill where the crowd meandered through the valley floor. A chimney belched smoke. Perhaps, he thought, he could find rest or a drink there. Perhaps, he thought, he could have one night free of nightmares, free of memories, and filled with a flicker of hope.
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