Where Steel Failed

He survives. His companions do not.

At an isolated monastery, Seraph watches a single man tear through the finest soldiers in his kingdom: his fellow Guardians of the Realm, sent with him to retrieve a rusted sword the Palace cannot even name. Their armor, their training, their courage-none of it is enough.

A secret warrior order takes him in and offers him a way to face the killer. First, he must learn to wield the forces that made his sword useless. His teachers can fade from sight. Powers he never knew existed begin to answer him. Every lesson hurts, and every day he spends learning is a day the killer can spend mastering what he stole.

His old life taught him whom to obey. This new one demands that he decide whom to trust.

With Miriam and Reidell, Seraph leaves the Sanctuary to hunt the man who killed his companions. Their search for the killer and the relic draws them into a war between kingdoms.

The people beside him give him reasons to care about more than vengeance. The power growing within him gives him something else: a hunger he must learn to govern before vengeance governs him.

Where Steel Failed is Book One of The Old Hunger, an adult epic fantasy about trust, hard lessons, and truths no one wants to face, where telling good from evil is rarely easy.

The Old Hunger begins here. The saga continues in What Wrath Requires.

Content note: graphic violence, including torture.