A thousand years after a cataclysm shattered civilization, humanity endures in a world beautiful and dangerous in equal measure. Small empires have clawed their way from the ashes, some still defending their borders with iron spears and stone walls, others salvaging weapons and technology from cities buried for centuries.
The Riftglass Chronicles follows the initiates of the Mankind Preservation Initiative, a program created before the fall to ensure humanity would have the knowledge, technology, and power to rebuild. Chosen for their rare affinity for Eluna, these initiates were sealed into cryo facilities across the globe and left to wait for a world ready to be saved.
The mission given to the initiates is straightforward: restore the energy supply that once powered civilization. For Steele Ardent, it is also personal. The MPI was founded by his father, and the legacy that sent Steele into cryosleep is the same one calling him back. But the deeper he digs, the less certain he becomes that his father's mission is what it appears to be.
The planet itself has changed. Eluna, the force that poured through the rift during the cataclysm, warped the creatures of Aethra into forms both wondrous and deadly. It also gave certain people something that looks, from the outside, very much like magic. The church decided long ago that it alone would control who gets to use it, and it has spent centuries making sure that arrangement sticks. Even emperors tread carefully around it.
To get closer to the truth, Steele allows himself to be initiated into that church. He gains power. He also gains a curse, a crystal affliction bound to his body that must be held at bay or consume him entirely. And he begins to see secrets that those outside the church were never meant to find.
In the northeast, something is gathering. Those touched by the crystal are not dying. They are organizing. And someone, somewhere, is pulling their strings.
Covers hand painted by the author.
