The Red Star Awakens
For five years, Dart has hunted a shadow that destroyed his past: the Black Monster.
But when he returns to Seles and finds his home burned to the ground, his search for revenge is forced aside. Shana, his childhood friend and the last living piece of the life he left behind, has been taken by the Imperial Sandoran army. What begins as a desperate rescue mission through the stone halls of Hellena Prison pulls Dart into the heart of a war already consuming Serdio.
Alongside Lavitz, a knight of Basil with everything to lose, Rose, a cold and deadly woman who knows more than she says, and Shana, whose hidden power draws enemies from every side, Dart is dragged into a conflict older and more dangerous than the civil war tearing the kingdom apart.
Emperor Doel’s ambition threatens to bury Serdio beneath iron, fire, and fear. Sandora has unleashed a dragon, and Basil is about to fall. And when Dart awakens the power of the Red-Eyed Dragoon, the war becomes something far larger than soldiers and crowns.
From the ruins of Seles to the gates of Hellena, from the battlefields of Hoax to the throne of the Black Castle, Dart must decide what kind of man he will become when revenge is no longer enough to guide him.
“When the clash of swords echoes, the journey chasing the past ends, and the journey to know today begins.”
Rain hammered against the edge of a forest, turning the night into a blurred, suffocating grey. High above the treeline, a grotesque, hulking commander sat atop his charger, the beast’s breath blooming in the cold air. He shifted in his heavy plate, his gaze fixed on the dim, golden lights of Seles huddling in the valley below.
Beside him, a figure stood motionless, draped in a deep purple cloak that seemed to drink the rain.
“The girl is the objective,” the hooded man said, his voice a razor-thin calm that remained flat against the storm. “Alive and unharmed. Those are your only orders.”
The hulking commander squinted at the valley, his lips pulling back to reveal serrated teeth. “And the village?”
“The village is irrelevant,” the mysterious figure replied, his tone devoid of emotion.
The giant’s fingers tightened around the pommel of his mace, the dark iron groaning under the pressure. He looked at the peaceful, unsuspecting rooftops, then back at the hooded figure. A slow, wet grin spread across his face.
“Then it burns,” the commander grunted.
He jerked his horse’s reins, the animal rearing in the mud. He left without waiting for a response. He leaned into the saddle and bellowed to the riders behind him, a sound that tore through the rain and drowned out the thunder.
“Burn it all! Take the girl, kill anyone who stands!” the hulking giant roared.
The forest erupted. Horses thundered forward, turning the muddy trail into a churning wake of chaos as pitch-fire arced through the night, trailing ribbons of black smoke.
The first volley of siege fire tore the night open. A predatory hiss cut through the steady drumming of the midnight downpour. For a heartbeat, only that sound remained. Then the rush of fire sliced through the wet air and shattered against the stone fronts of the village homes. The impact thundered, sending shards of masonry and blossoming plumes of fire into the darkness.
The fire struggled against the downpour, fighting the heavy sheets of water before the pitch-soaked rags finally won the argument with the rain. Smoke, thick and grey-black, curled from the eaves. The village vanished behind smoke, rain, and heat.
Inside the mayor’s home, the small room smelled of dried lavender and hearth-warmed pine. Shana stood near the timber table, her hands stabilizing a heavy ceramic basin of fresh river water while her adoptive mother folded coarse winter linens into a woven wicker chest. A sudden thunderous crash from the high ridge rattled the pottery along the mantelpiece, spilling a wet ring over the scrubbed floorboards.
The front oak door burst open as the mayor lunged inside, his tunic drenched and his face bone-white beneath a smear of flying grit. “The northern path is blocked!” he shouted, his fingers catching his wife’s sleeve to pull her toward the rear scullery exit. “Sandora riders are inside the perimeter! Move toward the lower cellar ditch!”
Before Shana could cross the threshold, the front timber frame fractured inward under a heavy iron boot. Two Sandoran infantrymen charged through the dust, their blackened surcoats slick with mud. The mayor surged forward to throw his weight against the lead soldier, but an iron-bound gauntlet slammed into his collarbone, shoving him back into a collapsing rack of iron kettles. His wife screamed, reaching blindly into the dark to drag his stunned, bleeding frame through the rear hatchway as the second soldier gripped Shana tightly by her wrists, cutting off her escape.
Outside, a few of the male villagers, led by a man in a scuffed leather jerkin, scrambled to form a defensive wall across the main thoroughfare. The master swordsman swung his steel broadsword in a wide, desperate arc, the blade catching a fierce orange glare from a burning porch. He intercepted a lunging Sandora foot soldier, parrying a spear thrust with a violent upward crack that shattered the ash-wood shaft. Tasman stepped inside the man’s guard, driving his hilt into the soldier’s visor and sending him sprawling into the mud.
“Hold the line!” Tasman shouted, his voice hoarse against the roar of the fire. “Form up by the well! Protect the families!”
The resistance was short-lived. Sandora cavalry swept down from the northern pass, their heavy destriers driving deep into the village square with an unyielding momentum. A sudden spear thrust caught Tasman in the flank, the iron point shearing through leather and drawing blood. He staggered back, his boots losing purchase in the carbonized sludge. Two more villagers rushed forward to drag him into the deep shadows near the stables as the defensive line collapsed under a flurry of iron hooves and fresh pitch-fire.
Near the village well, a child’s wooden knight lay face down in the thickening mud. Its crudely painted shield, once a proud crimson, bubbled and peeled as a nearby porch collapsed, sending a spray of orange sparks into the mud.
Beneath the roar of the storm, a low, guttural growl drifted from the cliffs—the sound of a massive, tusked beast stirring in the dark, a creature that breathed a fog of decay into the rain. The sound forced the warhorses to roll their eyes in terror, their foam-flecked mouths snapping wildly.
Riders stampeded through the town, their silhouettes frantic and blurred behind calfskin-covered windows, before drawing rein near a gathering of troops in the center of the square. The air smelled of wet ash and scorched pine, a heavy, cloying scent that clung to the back of the throat.
“Great Commander.” A soldier saluted, then gestured toward the girl in the white dress lying bound in the mud. “This way, sir.”
The massive commander knelt by her side. To any other man, she was a peasant casualty; to him, she was a riddle he struggled to solve, a ghost of a history he had been taught to bury. “So... this is her...”
From a pouch at his hip, he withdrew a small, curved fragment of pale glass. It was luminous and cold, its surface looking like a splinter of the moon. As he held it over the girl’s brow, the glass shone; the falling rain seemed to halt and shiver around its edges, the droplets turning into shards of cold, silver light that hung in the air.
The glass woke. The light it emitted was a piercing, lunar silver that diffused into the smoke. The girl stirred, answering the light before she ever opened her eyes. Her eyelids fluttered, a brief glimpse of recognition passing over her face before the darkness claimed her again.
“Hmm, indeed. Put her into custody,” he ordered. He secured the glass back at his belt and stood, turning his head toward the edge of the torchlight where the shadowy hooded figure appeared beside him—a shadow within a shadow, his cloak heavy but his posture entirely unaffected by the chaos. The figure stood with an unnatural stillness. While the soldiers were drenched and covered in the grime of the raid, the rain seemed to curve around his cloak, leaving the fabric impossibly dry. He existed slightly apart from the downpour, the heat, and the filth that coated every other living thing in the square.
“Why does this girl matter so much?” the commander asked. His voice was a blunt instrument, lacking the heat of the fires, his gaze narrow and tracking the soldiers with cold contempt as they pinned the captive down. To mobilize an imperial detachment for a single peasant casualty felt absurd, and the silence surrounding his directive bred irritation in his chest.
“His Majesty Emperor Doel commanded that the girl be taken into custody,” the hooded man replied. His tone was dry, like the rustling of old parchment, and utterly unyielding.
The commander halted, his gaze drifting back to the captive. He looked at her small, mud-flecked hands, the way the leather cords bit into her skin. “Who is she?”
The hooded figure stopped for a brief moment, the firelight flickering across the folds of his cloak without revealing the face within. Only a suggestion of a cold, satisfied smile seemed to linger in the darkness of the hood. “That... is not your concern,” he said at last. Without another word, the man turned and walked swiftly into the shifting curtain of smoke and rain. His silhouette thinned and dissolved into the grey mist, leaving the commander alone with the burning village and the girl in the dirt.
The commander stood there a moment longer, a solitary figure of iron amidst the ash. He watched a nearby doorway collapse inward, throwing a fresh cloud of ash into the air. He listened as the screams began to fade, smothered by the relentless downpour and the survivors’ exhaustion. A grim, cold efficiency defined the scene—a village razed to secure a single soul.
“Take her,” he ordered.
Two soldiers stepped forward with precision, moving with the impersonal air of men loading a crate of supplies. They lifted her limp body, her white dress trailing in the mud one last time before they hoisted her onto a black charger. They secured her wrists to the saddle pommel with leather cords, tightening the knots until the girl’s knuckles turned white. When the soldiers mounted their own horses, the leather creaked in unison, a measured sound that punctuated the dying roar of the fires.
The commander swung back into his saddle, his cape heavy and sodden against his back. He felt the weight of the night pressing down on him, and the water mingling into a grim layer of filth over his armor. He gave no signal for a victory cry. He simply turned his horse’s head toward the forest path that led away from the valley.
As the night dragged onward and the fires continued to burn, the column of black-clad riders moved out along the forest path toward the cliffs. They rode in a silent line, their horses’ hooves making a steady beat in the mud, a funeral march for a village that would never wake.
The flames of the village began to die down, choked by the rain and the lack of anything left to burn. The embers glowed a dull, angry red in the reflection of the soldiers’ armor. No man looked back. They were men of the Empire, and they had their prize.
Behind them, the village was nothing more than a collection of blackened skeletons, disappearing into the mist as if it had never existed at all. The heavy silence of the forest swallowed the sound of the hooves, leaving only the smell of charred wood and the cold touch of the storm behind.
