THE SHATTERED CROWN

Kaelith Sunward is twenty-three years old and has just inherited a kingdom that is, by every measurable sign, ending. The Sundering has cracked the Alliance. The court that raised him is still grieving his parents, eleven years dead. Kaelith was twelve when they were killed. His power surfaced for the first time that night, and he had a chance to reach for them. He did not move. He has not told a soul.

Lord Malrien, his trusted advisor, has been preparing him for a throne neither of them wants him to take.

And then the Codex comes for him. Or for someone like him. The artifact that chooses six Sworn across six worlds has not chosen anyone in three centuries. When it begins to call, Kaelith feels it in his chest the way a man feels a low note in a wall, hours before he locates the source.

Across a dead world he has never heard of, in a forest where the sun has not moved in a generation, a woman named Lyra restrings her father's bow with a thread of her own hair and finds a piece of silver embedded in bark that was clean an hour ago. The silver hums a song her mother used to hum. She does not know what she is holding. She knows she is meant to hold it. The two pieces of knowing are not arguing with each other for once.

Kaelith does not know her. She does not know him. But somewhere in the geometry between Aerros and Lythariel, the lullaby has begun.

FRACTURED EPOCH is a twelve-book multiverse epic in the register of Le Guin's sentence and Dark Souls' atmosphere. Saga I follows the first six Sworn. Saga II picks up after the immune response of reality arrives to put the multiverse back together. THE SHATTERED CROWN is where it starts.