FOR PAID SUBS: CHAPTER PREVIEW

Chapter 1: Blood and Snow

The night hung heavy over the northern wastes of Sermaria like the shroud of a funeral bier. The moon was a sickle of pale silver, bleeding its faint light across the jagged teeth of the frostbitten hills. Wind howled like a mourning widow, tearing through the passes and gnashing against the snow-laden cliffs. And through that cold oblivion stumbled a lone figure—a man with the fierce stance of a revenant—dragging his battered body across the white wilderness like a cross.

Each step bled a smear of crimson into the snow behind him, a breadcrumb trail for wolves or worse. The stranger’s breath came in hoarse puffs, freezing as it left his cracked lips. His boots were soaked, the soles worn thin from a hundred cursed miles, and his black cloak flapped behind him—matted with ice, blood, and the stink of sulfurous battle. He looked less like a man and more like a tattered sermon, torn from the pulpit and flung into the wild.

But even the mountains whispered his name with reverence and dread.

Ezekiel Creed.