The Lion & the Deathless Dark

This novel is set in a world plunged into permanent darkness after the sun fell ten years earlier. Vampires, created centuries ago by the goddess Nyaxia, waged war on humanity, while the gods of the White Pantheon, the coalition of deities worshipped by humans, turned on one another in a scramble for power. The story follows Kyrene, a human bounty hunter who wields the Blade of Retribution, a sentient, god-forged sword named Zefiah that once belonged to Shiket, the Goddess of Justice. As the Vindica Ultis, Shiket's divine champion, Kyrene is both famous and feared. Zefiah grants her enhanced strength and protection from death: No weapon but Zefiah herself can end Kyrene's life.

A prologue set ten years earlier shows Kyrene at seventeen, bloodied and traumatized, receiving Zefiah for the first time and walking into the darkness carrying her rage.

In the present, Kyrene leads a small group: Valentina, a sixteen-year-old machinist prodigy; Mirie, a priestess of Shiket; and Marko, a brutish fighter. They raid a cultist compound to capture a bounty and discover caged prisoners being used for cannibalism. Rather than risk her group, Kyrene privately kills or abandons the captives. While pursuing the mark, she encounters Septimus, a Bloodborn vampire prince who hides her from the Shadowborn, a rival vampire faction. He warns that the Shadowborn queen is hunting her on Nyaxia's orders.

At an inn, Valentina discovers a gold pendant Kyrene took from a condemned prisoner and sold, forcing Kyrene to reveal the truth about the captives and shattering Valentina's idealized image of her. Kyrene commissions Valentina to build a stringless crossbow capable of piercing vampire hearts. She then sends her companions to Hegaella, a fortified temple city, giving Mirie one of her blessed gauntlets as protection. She sets off alone to fulfill Shiket's tasks, killing defectors and collecting their heads as offerings.

Septimus reappears with devastating news: The Shadowborn used the gauntlet to track Kyrene's companions to Hegaella. Kyrene races there to find the temple destroyed and hundreds dead. She discovers Mirie's mutilated corpse, Marko dead having crawled toward Valentina as commanded, and Valentina slumped against a wall, killed by a vampire she slew with her final crossbow bolt. Consumed by grief, Kyrene summons Shiket. When the goddess dismisses the deaths as consequences of Kyrene's disobedience, Kyrene drives Zefiah through Shiket's chest and kills her.

Kyrene awakens in the Salt Keep on Glaea, a hidden island kingdom ruled by Septimus's cousin Atrius and his human wife Sylina, a blindfolded seer. Septimus reveals himself as Prince of the House of Blood and explains that Glaea is shielded from divine sight. Sylina performs a threadwalk, a vision of possible futures, showing a prophecy: The Vindica Ultis will wield divine weapons to slay multiple gods and collapse the White Pantheon. Septimus proposes to provide god-forged weapons while Kyrene does the killing. Kyrene accepts, privately planning to eventually kill both Nyaxia and Septimus.

Training under Atrius reveals the Bloodborn curse, which progressively strips vampires of their sanity. When Srana, goddess of machinery, attacks the Keep with an automaton army, Kyrene provokes her into appearing. Srana, having absorbed the dead Shiket's power, nearly severs Kyrene's arm before Septimus intervenes. Sylina and Atrius summon Nyaxia's presence as a distraction, and Kyrene and Septimus escape through an aethergate, a magical transport door, into Shadowborn territory.

Septimus presents Kyrene to the Shadowborn queen, Egrette, to avoid conflict, and Egrette's soldiers march Kyrene under mind magic to Kastivai, a prison where humans are kept as enslaved livestock. Septimus engineers an attack by the Nightborn, another vampire faction, as a distraction, and they escape. Afterward, he treats Kyrene's wounds, and they share painful memories, deepening their bond.

They travel toward Estrys, a Bloodborn fortress where Septimus has hidden a god-forged harp needed to kill Kajmar, the god of pleasure and beauty. During weeks of travel, Septimus reads romance novels aloud to ward off Kyrene's nightmares. They arrive to find Estrys massacred by Kajmar's followers. Septimus reveals his secret goal: to kill Nyaxia, who murdered his brother Gaius, the prophesied Bloodborn savior. He has spent years embedding divine fragments into his own body to make himself capable of wielding god-forged weapons.

The goddess Ix and Kajmar ambush them, forcing each to play the harp, which reveals its player's deepest desires. Kyrene's vision shows the daughter she lost to a miscarriage at seventeen, while Septimus's reveals his desire to kill Nyaxia. Septimus manipulates the gods' paranoia until Kajmar betrays Ix. Kyrene finishes Ix with Zefiah, then strangles Kajmar with the harp's broken string. When Nyaxia appears, Septimus whispers "Not yet," and Kyrene hesitates, missing her only clear shot.

At the Bloodborn capital of Vaktrana, Septimus introduces Kyrene to Alric, his young brother whom he has been raising. He reveals the full prophecy: The Vindica Ultis must use Shiket's five remaining swords to kill Nyaxia. Zefiah furiously confronts Kyrene for sparing the goddess and withdraws her magic, reducing herself to mere metal. Kyrene and Septimus consummate their relationship. When the Nightborn attack, they escape to the ruins of Hegaella.

An interlude reveals Kyrene's devastating secret: At seventeen, pregnant and bleeding, she found the original Vindica Ultis, a warrior chosen by Shiket, who refused to help her. Kyrene beat the hero to death and seized Zefiah, who recognized her hunger for justice. Shiket grudgingly allowed Kyrene to bear the blade but warned she was not the true chosen one. The prophecies Septimus followed applied to the original warrior, not Kyrene.

At Hegaella, Nyaxia reveals this truth to Septimus and declares the prophecy void, then strikes Kyrene down and takes Septimus away. Kyrene awakens alone and finds Zefiah shattered into three pieces. She breaks down sobbing for the first time in ten years, then discovers Valentina's completed crossbow among the debris. She summons Acaeja, goddess of fate, who reveals that two thousand years ago, the Bloodborn King Thastias built a cage to imprison Nyaxia, but the goddess discovered the plot and cursed his kingdom. Acaeja, who secretly helped build the cage, offers Kyrene its location in exchange for a vow never to act against her.

Kyrene returns to the House of Blood, where Septimus's curse is rapidly worsening. After a painful reunion, they reconcile and lead a team to the buried temple. Deep inside, they battle Thastias, still alive after two millennia as a monstrous guardian of blood and bone. Kyrene lodges a shard of Zefiah in Thastias's heart, and Septimus drives it home with blood magic. When Nyaxia arrives, Kyrene fires Valentina's crossbow, drawing a single drop of the goddess's blood. Septimus activates the ancient chains, binding Nyaxia.

Acaeja arrives and reveals her true plan: She orchestrated events to eliminate rival gods and seize total control. She strips Nyaxia of her divinity, banishes her, and refuses to lift the Bloodborn curse, declaring she will dismantle the mortal realm under her dominion. Septimus succumbs to his curse, his mind dissolving. Kyrene, mortally wounded, whispers her final command: "Turn me," asking Septimus to make her a vampire before he loses all lucidity.

Kyrene awakens three months later in a remote stronghold, Turned into a vampire. Atrius informs her that Acaeja is unraveling cities across the realm. Kyrene can no longer touch Zefiah, as the divine blade rejects vampires, and Septimus is alive but feral, consumed by his curse. She vows to find him and stop Acaeja. In an epilogue from Septimus's fragmented perspective, he wanders the wilderness until Nightborn soldiers capture him. In a final flash of lucidity, he remembers Kyrene's name.