the work

Querying Soon!

Every day, Eloweth Vigale gives her blood to the flames.

It is a small sacrifice. A tithe the villagers willingly give in gratitude for the only protection standing between them and the things whispered about after dark.

The Pyric Faith teaches that obedience and devotion keep the Darkness at bay and that those who offer themselves to the fire are blessed.

Then the living Darkness escapes, and Eloweth learns his prison was never the fires alone. It was her ancestor’s blood.

Hunted as the sacrifice meant to contain him, Eloweth must sever their tether before the power they share remakes her into the monster the Faith needs to justify its rule, but the farther she runs, the more she learns that the Faith’s power was never taken by force alone. It was built, drop by drop, prayer by prayer, from the offerings people were taught to give freely.

ASHMARKED is a dark epic fantasy about faith, fear, consent, and coercion, where the most dangerous systems are the ones that teach their people to mistake surrender for salvation.