“Driba?” One of the Sisters in the bucket brigade moved toward the old man. “Mr. Driba, what’s wrong with-”
She was perhaps thirty. She had freckles, funny ears that poked out just a little from beneath the cloth covering her hair, and a smile that was wide and kind. Ard remembered her. She was the one he had seen playing with the children near the orphanage, her laughter bright...
2025-12-22 23:01:01 +0000 UTC View PostThe wind was a tireless thing, lashing at his face with the persistence of a devoted woman. Ardan had never had such a thing happen to him personally, but he remembered the comparison from his grandfather’s stories. Those tales, however, had never spoken of how a storm could swell, how the sky and water could weave themselves into a single, leaden tapestry in the misty distance, a celestial f...
2025-12-18 23:01:01 +0000 UTC View Post“Let me get this straight…” Lidag frowned. He adjusted the cracked, cloudy spectacles he’d perched on his nose that had clearly been broken in the past and bent toward the list again. “You, mage, need four bottles that can hold three quarters of a liter each, three glass tubes, none of them longer than a meter or shorter than fifty centimeters. An oil burner. An aluminum sieve. Two hi...
2025-12-15 23:01:01 +0000 UTC View PostArdan was reaching for his hat when the cold iron of a gun barrel struck his temple hard.
“No jokes, mage,” the sheriff ground out. “I know that if that stick of yours isn’t in your hand, you can’t do a thing.”
What a strange way of speaking she had… but Sheriff Sestrova was right. Ardan’s staff was indeed standing to the side, and the young man made a point of not t...
2025-12-11 23:01:01 +0000 UTC View PostArdi squeezed the flanks of his horse, and the animal drew to a halt. With a shake of its head, it lowered its muzzle to the grass and began to graze, picking out the tallest, most succulent stalks. The wind caressed its mane, and along with it, the young man’s own overgrown hair, which had escaped from beneath the brim of his hat.
Soon, perhaps tomorrow night, or maybe this very evenin...
2025-12-08 23:01:02 +0000 UTC View PostArdi pulled the knot tight against the hitching post, the coarse rope biting into the wood. He gave the calm steppe horse a reassuring pat on the withers, having a quiet conversation of hands and hide. The horse snorted, then began to draw water from the long trough with noisy, satisfying gulps.
On Nathan’s advice (it was likely included in the “small” token of gratitude Ardi had pa...
2025-12-04 23:01:01 +0000 UTC View PostIn the morning, Ardan found that he had no choice but to visit the stage station, where he encountered a pair of gentlemen who were colorful in the way that old, stained wood is colorful. The first was a cowboy who was old and as tough as last year’s leather, and who perpetually chewed tobacco leaves. He kept spitting a rust-colored slurry into a tin urn with a practiced flick of his jaw. The...
2025-12-01 23:01:01 +0000 UTC View PostThe journey to Nigrad proved to be as trivial and mundane as possible. A few minor disputes over abstract topics flared up in the carriage every now and then. One man kept snoring too loudly, earning the displeasure of the man seated across from him; a lady’s child started crying at one point, which, of course, immediately annoyed everyone. And there were other small things as well: suitcases...
2025-11-27 23:01:01 +0000 UTC View PostIn the Colonel’s office, the curtains were trying with all their convincing might to mimic ghosts, a performance that was likely unnerving Milar more than a little. The windows, thrown wide open, had extended an invitation to the summer breeze, and the breeze, in its playful way, had no intention of declining. And yet, this did very little to save them from the suffocating staleness of the ai...
2025-11-24 23:01:01 +0000 UTC View PostJust as the Grand Magister had said, the moment Ardan returned to the first floor, two men approached him. One was middle-aged, with temples touched by silver, wearing a green cloak identical to Ardi’s own. The epaulettes on his shoulders signified that he had three and four rays respectively. He had narrow shoulders and short legs, and his skin bore the faint, pitted story of a severe childh...
2025-11-20 23:01:01 +0000 UTC View PostArdan breathed out and leaned back in his chair. It was a piece he’d bought at the flea market. A brand-new leather armchair, one with good lining and quality upholstery, would have cost him upwards of twenty-two exes—a crazy amount of money. Come to think of it, the Tend flea market, a place where you could buy almost anything for a reasonable price, much like on Sleepless Street, had been...
2025-11-17 23:01:04 +0000 UTC View PostArdi and Milar made their way over to Mshisty. Not because they wanted to—especially given the captain’s words, which were a puzzle yet to be solved—but because a military mage with a Pink Star had a far greater chance of helping everyone else than Ardan did. He could barely keep his own feet beneath him.
Whatever Elani’atie had done when leading him down the path to that great sh...
2025-11-13 23:01:02 +0000 UTC View PostWhen Ardi could at last see again and, more importantly, could breathe without feeling like every inch of his body was being wrenched apart, broken, and torn to shreds, he found himself on a decidedly grotesque platform. The place was similar to the underground grotto where the Spiders had conducted their experiment. They were standing on a broad platform accessed by four staircases that merged...
2025-11-10 23:01:03 +0000 UTC View PostArdi went back to the wall all the same, to the place where the entrance had been, and ran a hand across its surface. Just as in Baliero, all he could feel was crumbling plaster beneath old, slightly damp, and frayed wallpaper. That, and the smell of mustiness and stagnant air. Not a single one of his senses could honestly tell its owner that the wall was anything but real. Only his memory, tim...
2025-11-06 23:01:00 +0000 UTC View PostHi everyone!
Today is the day: Amazon Release day! It's edited and the covers are so cool! Also, it's narrated by the super talented Adam Stubbs and he did an amazing job. Totally worth it just for the audio!
While the mound of fat and flesh pulsed near the manor’s entrance, the skeletons, moving with a speed that did not seem possible for mere bones to possess, advanced toward their visitors. Ardan could feel the tension hanging in the air with his entire body. But it was a strange sort of tension. Fractured, somehow. Incomplete.
Alexander’s right hand was clenched around the grip of his ...
2025-11-03 23:01:01 +0000 UTC View PostSlicing through the twilight veil that shrouded the isolated road, they rode through a rugged forest. To the left and right, diving out of the summer night’s grayness, wrought-iron fences would wink into view, highlighted by gleaming reflections—these were fences worthy of the Palace Embankment itself. They were every bit as opulent, refined and elegant as anything found there. And just as ...
2025-10-30 23:01:01 +0000 UTC View PostTwo of the accumulators in his rings crumbled to dust in an instant. The prototype for Ice Dolls was a hungry thing that demanded a truly immense amount of power. It needed seven red and nine green rays, to be exact, a sum that equaled Ardan’s own maximum reserve of energy. That was precisely why he had asked Dagdag for the extra accumulators in the first place.
As soon as the ...
2025-10-27 23:01:02 +0000 UTC View PostWhen Din and Alexander stepped forward, Milar suddenly spoke up.
“Stop.” He turned and took out four pairs of sturdy work gloves from the trunk. The tough leather was of clearly anomalous origin, and along with the gloves, he handed them four blue cloaks of the same material. “Have you really been away from the Night Folk district for so long that you’ve forgotten all the protocol...
2025-10-23 23:01:02 +0000 UTC View Post“So,” Milar’s voice was a low rumble, like stones shifting in a dry riverbed. “You saw some... creature in the Palace, then. In that... looking-glass world of yours?” In the rearview mirror, Ardi watched Milar’s fingers flutter through the air, a gesture of airy dismissal. “The reverse side, or whatever you call it... In short, it was some sort of Spider-like Fae. Who, as...
2025-10-20 23:01:03 +0000 UTC View PostStepping out onto the street, Ardi winced. It was a pain of two parts: one was a sharp throb in his shoulder and chest; the other was a cloying stench that would creep under the skin and make a home there. One grew accustomed to the suffocating smog of the Tendari district very quickly, but it was just as easy to grow unaccustomed to it in the “fresher” parts of the Metropolis. It was almos...
2025-10-16 23:01:02 +0000 UTC View PostChapter 27
Ardi drifted awake to the slow, soft touch of fingers carding through his hair. Tess was winding it around her fingers, then tracing its lines with the pads of her thumbs before letting it fall free.
They were lying beneath the thin sheet that served as their blanket, a pale cloth lost in the sea of rumpled linens. Ardi remembered little of the evening be...
2025-10-13 23:01:01 +0000 UTC View PostChapter 26
The twelve translucent shields conjured by Orlovsky’s spell began to spin in front of Ardi. The young man himself, who was frozen knee-deep in a foul, sticky sludge that was doing a poor job of passing itself off as water, watched with a hunter’s stillness as the scene unfolded before him.
The creature was in no hurry to attack them. Not because it di...
2025-10-09 23:01:02 +0000 UTC View Post“Alright, let’s re-establish the timeline,” Milar said, leaning against the hood of his car. He was working his way through a sandwich, one he’d bought from a cafe not far from the Castle Tower.
Like Ardi, who, at that very moment, was tearing into a strip of tough bear jerky with his teeth—a sight that drew startled looks from passersby but not so much as a flicker of emotion f...
2025-10-06 23:01:01 +0000 UTC View PostThey were sitting in the “Eltir” again, in that same familiar spot close to the Markov Canal. Alexander and Din had been called away for work. They were operatives, not investigators, and so they were sometimes dispatched as reinforcements, or for operations to capture or detain particularly difficult targets. It was a thing worth remembering: in a city of twenty million souls, its troubles...
2025-10-02 23:01:01 +0000 UTC View PostThe time they spent waiting for Alexander and Din was not wasted. Milar continued his meticulous search of Oglanov’s office, while Ardi twisted a sheet of paper into a cone and gathered a small amount of the crystalline dust left on the threshold. It was unlikely that even Dagdag and his specialists could learn anything from it, but if there was even the slightest chance…
Then ...
2025-09-29 23:01:01 +0000 UTC View PostArdi set his pencil aside and allowed himself a moment of rest, leaning back into the stiff embrace of a wooden chair that was more sturdy than it was comfortable.
He winced as a short, insistent lance of pain flared in his side. He unscrewed the cap from his thermos and poured a measure of fragrant, strong tea into the small cup. The brew was Tess’ handiwork. The girl had asked Ardi fo...
2025-09-25 23:01:01 +0000 UTC View PostTess shifted on the bed, the movement full of careful grace, and wrapped her arms around Ardi. She held him with the same gentle reverence one might’ve used for a sculpture made of fragile, sun-dried sand. A sharp, involuntary cry nearly tore itself from his throat as the weight of her hands touched his back.
Ardan held it in, because if he hadn’t, the sound would have caused them bot...
2025-09-22 23:01:01 +0000 UTC View PostTime stretched out like honey in winter. Its bloody, relentless march slowed to a single, held breath. As Ard’s fingers strained for his staff that seemed to be drifting away on a slow tide, the world resolved itself into a series of silent, screaming moments.
The gangsters, their heads bound in white, had cocked their rifles. Ardan saw it all. He saw the triggers yield to pressure, saw...
2025-09-18 23:01:01 +0000 UTC View PostArdi whipped around toward the departing car, then back to his fiancée, and once again listened to the sound of its tires receding. Sleeping Spirits. How must that have looked? What… what was he supposed to say in such a situation? Maybe…
Tess laughed. She was wearing a yellow dress, a blue hat, and shoes with a tiny heel, and covering her mouth with a small hand hidden unde...
2025-09-15 23:01:01 +0000 UTC View Post