Where loyalty shatters, legends are forged.
The King’s Fall
The Broken Crown Saga Book One
by Orlan Drake
Genre: Epic Fantasy
A Gripping Tale of
Royal Betrayal and Hidden Romance
When darkness falls on the kingdom of Ardanthia, readers
will find themselves caught up in a story where nothing is what it seems.
Princess Eloise faces impossible choices as murder and betrayal tear her world
apart. Her secret love for the Prince of Caladorn adds another layer of danger
to an already deadly situation. This isn't just another royal romance - it's a
heart-pounding adventure where love and loyalty clash in the most dangerous
ways possible. You'll feel every moment of tension as Eloise walks the razor's
edge between duty and desire.
Mystery and
Investigation That Keeps You Guessing
Sir Cedric Blackthorn brings detective skills that would
make any crime solver jealous. His brilliant mind works to solve puzzles that
could save or destroy an entire kingdom. As Ambassador Zafir arrives with
hidden motives and Baron Gorgo schemes from the shadows, every character
becomes a suspect. The investigation twists and turns through palace halls
filled with secrets. You'll find yourself trying to solve the mystery alongside
Cedric, picking up clues and second-guessing every revelation. The chase scenes
will have you on the edge of your seat as our heroes race against time through
a kingdom ready to explode into war.
Fantasy Adventure
That Brings Legends to Life
The Broken Crown Saga starts with this incredible first book
that mixes political drama with fantasy elements that feel fresh and exciting.
Secret groups work behind the scenes, pulling strings that control the fate of
nations. The world-building draws you in completely, making you believe in a
place where magic and politics dance together in dangerous ways. This story
proves that sometimes solving one crime can prevent an entire war - and that
the most important battles happen in the shadows.
For readers of David Eddings and Terry Brooks, this
sweeping tale of betrayal, magic, and destiny will leave you breathless.
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The
King's Fall opens not in a throne room, but underground. A secret order — no
names, no titles, only cloaks and the authority of old purpose — has gathered
around a rune-carved table to debate an incident that should not have happened:
a full diplomatic party has been wiped out on the road between two kingdoms,
and neither king ordered it. Someone is pulling strings that no one can see.
The council is about to do something dangerous. They are going to look.
There existed beneath the old earth a sanctum
kept from all maps and memories, shielded by corridors that twisted into each
other with a geometry of deliberate confusion. In the deepest of its halls, a
chamber circular and primeval waited in perpetual shadow. The room's
centrepiece, a stone table whose circumference rivalled a city well, had been
carved from a single slab of basalt. Its rim and surface bore etched runes and
ancient sigils, their purpose unclear to any but initiates of the silent order
that convened there.
Around this table, shrouded figures gathered,
their cloaks indistinguishable but for subtle variations in the weave — one a
blue so dark it drank in the torchlight, another a coarse grey laced with fine
metallic thread, a third in deep forest green that shed a dusting of spores
with every movement. Even in the heart of stone, the air hung moist and cold,
saturated with the scent of burnt tallow and the musk of old water. From
sconces in the arched walls, torches spat and guttered, casting orange light that
slithered across faces as pale and anonymous as death masks.
No titles were spoken here, only the functional
necessity of names earned and worn like invisible crowns. The magister at the
head of the table, tall, angular, motionless save for the slow folding of
gloved hands, did not need to identify himself. When he spoke, the voice cut
through the stillness as though it had been whetted on the stone itself.
"Our watchers are not in agreement."
The words were uninflected, carefully measured.
A murmur passed around the circle, not of
dissent but of discomfort. The second figure, smaller but with an evident
coiled energy, leaned forward. Her hands were bare, fingers long and stained
black along the creases, and she tapped the table where the runes formed a
broken circle.
"It is a minor border skirmish,
Sentinal," she said. "Bloodier than most, but hardly unprecedented.
Let the kingdoms squabble among themselves — Ardanthia and Caladorn have always
warred at the fringes." She sounded impatient, as though summoned for a
lesser concern.
The magister in blue, whose hood cast his face
into shadow, spoke with a slight tremor. "The killing was not so minor. An
entire diplomatic train vanished — every courier, every retainer, every guard.
The ambassador's body was not even left for ransom. That is new. That is
calculated."
The Sentinal allowed the words to settle,
scanning the circle with a gaze that seemed to fix on each magister, regardless
of where his face was aimed. "Six months ago, an envoy of Ardanthia, Lord
Marcus Blackbriar, journeyed south with full ceremonial escort. Their course
was direct: Eldoria to Delrith, then through the corridor to Mirashar. Before
reaching Delrith, they were set upon and destroyed. Only one man survived, and
he staggered back to Eldoria."
"Coward's tale," said the woman with
the ink-stained hands. "Most witnesses die of their wounds, the lucky ones
first."
The Sentinal ignored the snipe. "Our
watcher in Eldoria heard the testimony. The survivor told King Leofric himself
that the attackers wore the livery of Caladorn. Our watcher in Caladorn,
however, tells a different story: they found no evidence of a sanctioned
operation. If anything, Caladorn's own patrols have increased since the
incident. Their court desires peace. Their king is tired of war."
A rustling of fabrics, the weight of suspicion
shifting around the table. The green-cloaked figure finally broke his silence,
voice low and gravelly. "If both kings are ignorant, then who profits from
the attack? It's no longer a border dispute. It's something else."
A pause, broken only by the hiss of a torch
collapsing into itself. The Sentinal's next words fell heavier for the silence.
"Our order exists not to shape events, but
to understand them. Yet this affair grows more opaque with every new witness.
Either our watchers lie, or we are being lied to. That alone is reason to
intervene."
"There's little evidence it threatens the
Balance," the woman pressed. "What can it matter if kingdoms grind
each other to salt? We have seen worse in the east. Nothing endures but the
Pattern."
"Unless the Pattern itself is being
rewritten," the blue-hooded man said.
At this, the Sentinal brought his palms flat on
the runic table, producing a hollow note that echoed into the stone. "We
are not theorists. To maintain the balance we need clarity, not further
confusion. We will look. Tonight, we summon the memory of that day and see for
ourselves."
The woman's upper lip curled. "The power to
see through time is not borrowed lightly, Sentinal. It leaves marks on both the
living and the dead."
"We risk more by not knowing," the
Sentinal said. "If our council cannot agree on what is, how can we guide
what must be?"
The blue-hooded man lifted a hand, uncertain.
"If it is as you say, and both sides are being manipulated, then the
ritual may be hazardous. Memory is often trapped by the will of those who
shaped it."
Twilight’s Dominion
The Broken Crown Saga Book Two
The peace was always a lie. They just didn't know whose.
Queen Eloise of Ardanthia has done everything right. She
negotiated the alliance with Caladorn, married the prince, held her court
together through blight and borderland attacks and the whispered threat of an
ancient secret order. Now, with villages vanishing overnight — crops blackened,
livestock dead, people simply gone — she does what any good
ruler would do. She sends her best.
Sir Cedric Blackthorn, the precise and principled
knight-investigator. Captain Elira, a soldier who has survived too much to
flinch at anything. Tomas, a scholar more at home with footnotes than
fistfights. Ryn, a street thief from the Saltspire docks whose instincts are
worth more than anyone's education. And Auralias — the Court Mage, brilliant
and unsettling in equal measure — who brings knowledge of old magic that none
of the others possess, and who may be the only thing standing between Ardanthia
and the League of the Moon.
Together, they are hunting the League before the League can
finish what it started.
What they find will change everything they think they know —
about the attacks, the conspiracy, and the true scale of what is being
assembled in the dark. There are artifacts, older than any living kingdom,
whose power was thought lost to history. There are secrets buried so deep that
uncovering them will cost more than anyone is prepared to pay. And there is a
question, growing louder with every mile: who, exactly, is the enemy?
Twilight's Dominion is a story about loyalty
tested to breaking, courts where every smile hides a calculation, and the
particular horror of realising that the enemy has been in the room all along.
It is about a queen learning that the peace she built was built for her
— and a company of mismatched, battle-worn companions who keep fighting even
after the ground gives way beneath them.
Set across mountain fortresses carved from living rock,
fog-wrapped port cities, a besieged royal palace, and the treacherous corridors
of two kingdoms in collision, this is epic fantasy for readers who like their
politics sharp, their magic consequential, and their betrayals earned.
Perfect for readers who love:
*The political intrigue of A Song of Ice and Fire
*The ensemble loyalty of The Lies of Locke Lamora
*The world-building depth of Robin Hobb
*Characters who are competent, scarred, and worth caring about
"There's no certainty in what's ahead. But I'd
rather die among friends than watch the world go to monsters."
The Broken Crown
Saga:
Book One: The King's Fall
Book Two: Twilight's Dominion
Book Three: Echoes of Kings - coming soon
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Twilight's
Dominion opens on two stories running in parallel. In the first, Lady Seraphina
D'Argent — a diplomat travelling alone through the unforgiving Crownspine
mountains — has just been surrounded by armed strangers on a mountain pass. She
has been riding for ten weeks on orders she doesn't fully understand, heading
toward coordinates her queen gave her without explanation. She is about to
discover something that will change everything she thought she knew about the
world she serves.
~820 words
The figures came on in absolute silence,
fanning out across the trail with the efficiency of wolves. In a matter of
seconds they had closed off her retreat and were sliding, almost bonelessly,
down the talus to encircle her.
Their leader wore a helm that entirely
concealed his face, its visor painted with a crude snarl of animal fangs. The
others carried composite bows at the ready, arrows nocked, but pointed down — a
gesture that managed to be both merciful and contemptuous at once. Seraphina
drew Cassia to a halt and set her hands openly on the pommel, every muscle
rigid with calculation.
"State your business," the leader
growled, voice rendered inhuman by the tin of his visor.
Seraphina debated, for perhaps two breaths,
whether to attempt bluff or bravado. The bows decided the matter. "I am
Lady Seraphina D'Argent, of Armathor," she replied, "on a mission
from Her Majesty Queen Evelina."
The leader turned, a lazy gesture that made
mockery of her authority, and a snort went up among his lieutenants. "And
your escort?"
"Was not permitted." Seraphina kept
her gaze level, though the blood pounded furiously in her ears. "I am to
meet with a representative of the Riders, if you are such."
The mention of the Riders produced a shift in
the circle. The archers exchanged glances, some wary, some almost amused. The
leader drew closer, boots crushing the shallow crust of snow.
"You speak too much for a courier,"
he observed. "But too little for a spy." He swept a gauntleted hand
at her pack horse. "Open your satchel."
She untied the travel case from the gelding,
working fingers gone numb in the cold, and fished out the scroll tube. It was
heavy, made of dark wood and brass, the wax seal untouched. She held it up so
they could all see the sigil of Caladorn: a pair of crossed sabres over a
seven-pointed star. There was a stillness, then a slow, careful release of
tension among the archers as the leader nodded, almost respectful.
"Walk forward. Slowly," he said.
They escorted her up the ridge, off the
trail, through a section of scree so loose that even Cassia balked. For an
hour, maybe more, they wound through impossible switchbacks and across narrow
spines of rock, each step a new exercise in balance and terror. Finally, the
leader raised his hand and the party halted at a narrow saddle between peaks.
Seraphina caught her breath, took a long
swallow from her water skin, and paused as she noticed what lay beyond the
saddle.
The city was carved into the living stone of
the mountain's interior, hidden from the world by both geometry and design.
Terraced galleries spiralled down the inside face of a gigantic crater, studded
with windows and fire-gleaming vents that gave the place an eerie, hive-like
vibrance. Slender bridges of bone-white stone spanned the void between rocky
spurs, connecting to massive towers whose roofs gaped open to the sky. Far
below, at the crater's deepest point, a plaza of blue granite caught the light
of a hundred lanterns, transforming it into a pool of shimmering stars.
She had never seen such a thing. She had
never heard of such a thing. And yet, as she stood there, wind plucking at her
cloak, Seraphina understood instantly, with a sick clarity, that Queen Evelina
had always known.
They did not take her down the public steps.
Instead, the archers led her along a narrow spiral cut into the stone,
half-tunnel, half-balcony, with just enough space for one person and a horse at
a time. The air grew colder with every turn, and the hum of unseen machinery —
bellows, pulleys, some kind of water-driven elevator — echoed from deep within
the walls. At last they emerged onto a flagstoned platform where the leader,
visor now up, gestured for her to dismount.
"Wait here," he said, less
threatening now. "You will be summoned."
Seraphina did not ask how long. She
untethered her gloves, flexed her hands, and tried not to shiver in the thin
mountain air. The view from the platform was staggering; across the chasm, the
terraces of the city glimmered with what looked like glass or ice, and tiny
figures moved between the arcades.
A boy in a grey tunic arrived, bearing a tray
of tea and something that looked like bread but tasted of cedar and salt. He
smiled at her with a gentleness that belonged to another world. When she asked
him his name, he merely gestured for her to drink.
Time stretched, then snapped back when the
leader returned, flanked by two more guards in matching visors. "You will
come," he said.
I am a new author writing under the pen name Orlan Drake, my
real name is Chris Hills Farrow. I've
worked as a freelance writer for magazines in the past but have always wanted
to write fiction, and after having more free time during the lockdowns, I have
made some progress. I enjoy fantasy because it opens my mind to other worlds or
ways of life that do not exist in real life, or have ever existed.
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