The Awakening

A fallen empire. A kingdom renamed after a sliver of moon. A young soldier whose mother's pendant warms against her skin when no one is looking.

When Kira Silverwind is assigned to Squad 922 and ordered north, she expects a standard reconnaissance. What she finds is a unit of strangers stitched together from the wreckage of seven different lives: a fallen knight, a scholar with a carved staff of light, a tracker who has run out of things to hunt, a twin brother who hears her silences, and others whose stories she does not yet know how to ask for.

The road north is long. The trees are watching. And the further they march, the more Kira begins to suspect that none of them ended up in this squad by accident.

Darkstone: The Awakening is a story about becoming a family by accident, and discovering that accidents are sometimes older than we are. About blades of ice, shadows with memory, and the quiet terror of realizing that the name you were given may belong to something bigger than yourself.

The opening volume of a sprawling dark fantasy series, for readers who love morally complex characters, slow-burn mysteries, and the particular warmth of a found family forged under pressure.