Book One of The Soul's Edge Chronicles
The Story
"Can necromancy be used for good?"
This is the question that drives everything. Maraeth intends to find out.
Maraeth Leafrunner
Maraeth is a necromancer in a world that fears her magic. Self-taught, compassionate, and alone for most of her life, she spent a decade in isolation in the forest, learning her craft from stolen books and hard experience. She uses the power of death not to destroy, but to protect. The world doesn't believe her. She has learned to live with that.
When a chance encounter pulls her out of isolation and into an unlikely alliance, Maraeth finds herself part of something she never expected: a found family of warriors, healers, and misfits, united by a common enemy and, slowly, by something much deeper.
The World
The world of the Soul's Edge Chronicles is one of kingdoms, ancient magic, and fractured alliances. Necromancy is not merely feared, it is reviled. The church, the crown, and common people alike regard it as an abomination.
Beyond the borders of the kingdom lies Vordania, an enemy state where the necromancer Malachor operates under state protection, building an undead army powered by gems containing trapped souls. Untouchable by politics. Unstoppable by conventional means.
The Enemy
Malachor is everything Maraeth refuses to be. Where she uses death magic to serve the living, he harvests souls as fuel. Where she fights to be trusted, he has made himself untouchable. He is the argument the world uses against her.
Stopping him will require Maraeth to go further than she has ever gone. To embrace the very power the world fears most. And to prove, once and for all, that she is not him.