60 pages • 2 hours read
A Torch Against the Night
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Part 1Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Content Warning: This section of the guide includes discussion of graphic violence, illness, child abuse, physical abuse, child death, and death.
Part 1: “Flight”
Part 1, Chapter 1 Summary: “Laia”
A Torch Against the Night is set in the militaristic Martial Empire, in which the ruling Martials oppress and enslave the once-learned Scholar class. Other societies, the Mariners and the Tribals, live outside the Empire, having achieved uneasy truces. The Empire’s army consists of elite soldiers, known as Masks, trained at Blackcliff Academy, and lesser soldiers, the legionnaires and auxes. The world also contains supernatural elements, including seers called Augurs and creatures like efrits and ghuls.
The story follows three characters in alternating first-person perspectives: Laia, a Scholar fugitive seeking to rescue her brother from Kauf Prison; Elias Veturius, a former Mask who has deserted to help her; and Helene Aquilla, Elias’s former comrade, now the Emperor’s Blood Shrike, tasked with hunting them down.
Laia and Elias flee through the catacombs beneath the city of Serra with Empire soldiers in pursuit. They take cover in a crypt, and a mysterious thud from deeper in the tunnels distracts a patrol, allowing them to pass.
A tremor shakes the tunnels, and the fugitives encounter a wounded efrit. The creature demands silver and attacks Laia, but her silver armlet repels it. The efrit then taunts Elias about his past before screaming his name to alert nearby soldiers.
