Book 2 – The Story So Far

Book 1:

Spoiler

Noah Calder is a mechanical engineer from New York who has spent months searching for his older brother Lucien, who vanished without a trace during a solo expedition into the Siberian wilderness. Following a trail of clues with the help of a Russian guide named Yuri, Noah traced Lucien to an ancient stone structure deep in the Putorana Plateau — only to fall through a portal at the bottom of it and wake up in another world entirely.

That world is Tenebrae, a realm of magic, ancient ruins, and a society built around a rigid system of grimoires and spell-casting. The magic system is divided by gender: those who identify as female can channel and cast spells, while those who do not can write the runes that power them — a skill that has grown vanishingly rare since the fall of the ancient Fae empire. Noah, as a human male with no grimoire and no knowledge of the Common tongue, arrives with nothing but his engineering background and his instinct for solving problems.

He is rescued from the forest by Ciri — a brilliant, meticulous Wild Fae scholar with pink hair and golden eyes whose approach to the world, including falling in love, is governed by the same methodical precision she applies to ancient linguistics. She brings him back to her village and family: her father Ken, a quiet, unsettlingly capable man whose mysterious past is carefully never discussed; his three wives Aelya, Thala, and Vela; and Bryn, the tribe's blacksmith, and her husband Cael, one of the rare male Fae scribes. Over the weeks that follow, Noah integrates into the tribe's life, learns the language, teaches himself rune-writing, and begins to understand that his engineering knowledge — ball bearings, levers, practical mechanics — can do things in Tenebrae that magic cannot.

His relationship with Ciri deepens into something neither of them entirely planned for. After surviving a Corrupted attack on the village, a griffon encounter in the forest, and a raid on a human military camp where they discover evidence of outside interference by a rising power called Ferrum Vale, Noah and Ciri find the second half of a pair of ancient Fae communication mirrors.

When a half-Fae trader named Hannah arrives with her ship The Winter's Debt, she reveals that she’d taken the previous traveller – who Noah believes is his brother - south to the human capital city of Crownspire. He negotiates passage alongside Ken and Ciri, who are intent on bringing the evidence they found in front of the crown. The journey takes them through Tarn's Reach — an industrial port city where they pick up Sable, a sharp-tongued twelve-year-old street kid — before a confrontation with a criminal kingpin named Ohnar ends with Noah killing a man for the first time, and Hannah's complicated past with a Crownspire creditor named Magnus coming into the open. By the time they reach Braemont, the three of them have arrived at an understanding that is equal parts professional arrangement and something harder to name.

On the road from Braemont to Crownspire, the carriage driver mentions a colleague who died two years earlier while escorting a traveller from the old realm. When Noah asks where the grave is, he already knows what he'll find: a marker with Earth objects scattered among it — coins, a wristwatch, a wallet with melted plastic cards. He stands at what he believes is his brother's grave and says goodbye.

He does not stay down for long. A black griffon hatchling — the runt of a destroyed nest, impossibly small and impossibly dark — hatches from an egg Noah has been carrying since the forest. He names her Piper.

With Crownspire on the horizon, Noah commits to seeing the mission through. He carries evidence of Ferrum Vale treason, one of a pair of ancient communication mirrors, a growing scribe's ability, and a grief he is only beginning to learn how to carry.

What he doesn't know is that somewhere in Tenebrae, in a forgotten tower, a tall blond man is kneeling over the geometric runes carved into the floor — writing notes in English that nobody around him can read, and waiting for his moment.

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