by
Ash, an orphaned peasant boy, survived an unnatural plague at a copper mine with help from a mystic healer. He was adopted by a noble house and educated as a gentleman—a house where every male heir in the bloodline is burdened by a debilitating curse.
Years later, the long-lost Prince Glea returned after forty years gone at sea. Still youthful as the day he sailed, he could not explain how he gained immortality. When his doubting brothers called him a pretender, he waged a civil war to reclaim his royal birthright.
Ash, as a grown man, takes up arms on behalf of his adopted household to support restoring Prince Glea to the throne. But in the aftermath of battle, he discovers an ancient secret that reveals the truth of his childhood trauma. Now, he must choose to make a sacrifice to save his prince and every living thing in the world.
Publisher: Sasoriza Books
Cover Artists:
Genres:
Tropes: Found Family, Immortality, Prophesy
Setting: other world
Languages Available: English
Tropes: Found Family, Immortality, Prophesy
Setting: other world
Languages Available: English
"Fifteen days, fifteen days," muttered the bristle-faced digger who hauled a bucket of mud.
"They're alive, I know it." Young Ash straddled his skinny young legs around his own mud-filled bucket. Despite the rag he gripped, the wire handle gouged the palms of the boy’s hands. Ash’s small shoulders ached but he could not let go. A little farther…. A little farther…
On the cliff's edge, Ash tipped the bucket and poured off the foul, blue-tinted silt. Part of the bucket's contents flowed downhill but most of the sludge stuck to the clayey rocks of the stripped hillside.
"Sorry to say it, laddie, but I worked th' mines since I were younger than you. Seen a lots of cave-ins and not a lot of men come out of 'em. If it's been fifteen da—"
READ MOREAsh swung his fists upward at the miner's gut. His balled-up knuckles struck a gritty burlap apron. Plop-plop, his little fists sounded like a wooden spoon hitting sacks of sand. Blood drummed in his ears. His scrawny arms shook to the bone.
"They're alive, they're alive!" Exhausted, Ash's limp arms drooped to his sides. His eyeballs ached but no tears came.
COLLAPSE
