A young assassin who was condemned as a heretic at birth.
An old soldier running from the ghosts of his warring past.
A young farm boy cursed with a Gift he didn't ask for.
A tale of intigue, mystery, and epic fantasy.Sul'naom has been a heretic since birth, and a killer by the age of ten.
En'naom is a simple farmboy Gifted with a treasure he doesn't want.
Elrin Avoglin is a father and ex-rebellion leader haunted and running from the choices of his past.
Three individuals, drawn together by threads of fate and danger, and stalked by a common face in the shadows.
This book is a strange one for me. It was by far the book that I wrote the fastest Draft 1 of. I had just come off of finishing Draft 1 of my first book - which took almost 5 years to complete - and I realized that that series was far too large for me to take up at that time. So I was looking for a new book to start working on, and I started going through the ideas that I had.
I stumbled upon a magic system I had made a few months before - one where crystals fell to the earth and those who broke them were Gifted with magical powers in one of three categories: Bending, Creation, and Destruction.
This system intrigued me, and I latched onto it, fleshing it out more than I had ever done for any magic system before it. I identified where the magic, called Gifts, came from - an ethereal world called the Energy Realm - and the various limitations, abilities, and cultural significance, as well as historical examples of great Sliver-Gifted of the past.
Then I started adding characters into the world. The first installment was a young woman named Sul'naom, who was born out of the question, "What if somebody was ousted as a heretic at birth?" I expanded from there, explaining the culture that she grew up in that condemned people like her - people with Sliver-Gifts - and how exactly she had been born with these powers. This required some tweaking of the magic, but I actually think that was to its benefits.
The next character that I settled on was the anxious young man that would later be named En'rona. He was actually mentioned briefly in the original notebook that I outlined the magic of Sliver-Gifts, and I took what I had written there and expanded massively upon it. He was a farmboy who grew up on the outskirts of the small town of Enda. As I wrote from his perspective, his relationships with others in the town solidified. He feels responsible for his younger brother, Tev, but is also slightly annoyed by him. His father, Av'rona, is strict, and their relationship is tenuous at best. Av is actually one of the main reasons En struggles with his fear and anxiety. I adjusted some worldbuilding for some of this story, namely how much of Sliver-Gifted was widely known among the world, and how much still remained a mystery.
Finally, the third character that I added was the war-torn bartender, Elrin Avoglin, hailing from Topland, but imigrating to Midland to escape his tortured past. I can't tell you what specifically happens in his past, but it is likely one of the pieces that I spent the longest on, trying to get the dates right and alligned properly.
The plot evolved naturally from both the magic system and the characters, playing off of them in ways that I didn't even realize until later in the outlining process. After I got that, I started outlining - furiously.The outline of book 1 was done before September ended, and I started drafting, all the while outlining the other two books in the series. I finished the outline of book 3 sometime in November 2023, if I recall correctly. The day before Christmas, I was close to finishing Draft 1 of book 1. So I sat down and grinded the last few scenes out. And before the day ended, the book was finished.