This post was originally created for my Fiction Substack and is now being posted here for you to enjoy. I hope you will!
The Eight Kingdoms has lived in my imagination for quite some time. It’s a world full of stories that begin in quiet places and grow into something far larger than the people who first carry them.
This space is where I’ll be sharing those stories, one episode at a time.
There will be war, yes. And magic, certainly. But more than anything, this is a world about people—about loyalty, friendship, and the kind of love that endures even when everything else begins to fall apart.
I’m so glad you’re here.
The Eight Kingdoms: A Beginning
There was a time when magic was not feared.
It was taught in quiet halls, passed carefully from master to student, shaped by discipline and trust. Under the guidance of the Great Wizard Marmaed, it was said that magic could heal, protect, and even bind the world together.
But power, once given, is not always kept in gentle hands. When Marmaed died, only two of his pupils remained.
One chose darkness.
The other stood against it.
BuMurain, once brilliant beyond measure, turned from all he had been taught. The magic he embraced consumed him until the man he had been was no more than a memory.
Athenaius did not turn away. He was the only one who could stand against BuMurain. The only one who believed the world was still worth saving—not for its kingdoms or its crowns, but for the people who lived quietly within it. For the lives that would be lost. For the futures that would never come to pass.
Their war was not only one of power.
It was a war of what the world would become.
When it ended, the story passed down through the kingdoms was a simple one:
Athenaius had fallen.
BuMurain had prevailed.
And so the world learned to live with fear.
Magic was forbidden. Not because it had vanished, but because it had not. It lingered in hidden places, waiting to be found, or to find its way back into careless hands.
Years have passed.
But fear has a way of returning before hope is ready to meet it.
Now whispers speak of BuMurain once more.
And far from the courts and cities, in a fortress of dark stone perched high above the world, young men and women are being trained for a war they do not yet understand.
Some will fight.
Some will fall.
And some, though they do not yet know it, will change everything.
This is their story.
You can follow this serialized fiction on Substack (currently on Episode Eighteen at this posting) or you can subscribe to this blog (below) to start from Episode One on a weekly basis.
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