Vol. 2, Issue 11 of the Raven & Quill is up — and this one cuts close.
"The Harlequin's Mask" starts where every honest conversation should: everyone wears one. But in Aithyris, masks aren't social lubricant. They're survival architecture. And the question haunting Chapters 13 and 14 is what happens when the war ends, you reach up to take the helmet off — and there's no latch.
We're inside Cedrik Dawntreader's triple identity crisis, the quiet tragedy of Krysaalis's Court Mask (she didn't put it back on to protect herself — she put it on to protect everyone else from her), and Talathis standing alone at the helm in the fog, trusting the language her body told him instead of the frost in her voice.
Plus a preview of what's waiting ahead. The cages get worse.
If you've ever worn a mask so long you forgot how to take it off — the comments are open.
In Chapter 14, Talathis Dawntreader is alone at the helm of the Sea Wolf, deep in the Vapor Shroud, where the world shrinks to thirty yards of slick decking and black water. The fog has swallowed everything except the silence she left behind — and that's louder than the sea.
But the ocean doesn't let you grieve in peace for long. Before this chapter is done, we're plunging into the cosmology of the Drowned — what really happens to a soul when there's no pyre, no ceremony, no light to follow home. Grief. Islander pragmatism. And the specific horror of a ghost who doesn't know it's a ghost.
This is the newest chapter in Val Saraven's Legend of the Silver Blade — dark, literary fantasy with actual weight to it, set in the world of Aithyris. If you like your high fantasy atmospheric, rigorous, and willing to ask the hard questions, come find us.
Read Chapter 14 here: https://www.worldanvil.com/community/manuscripts/read/9648609273-val-huginn-book-13A-legend-of-the-silver-blade/ab987abb-01a1-4d7d-93df-0888914ce1a9
#DarkFantasy #Fantasy #LegendOfTheSilverBlade #WebFiction #IndieAuthor #NewRelease #Worldbuilding
