Witch King (the Rising World, #1)

The novel alternates between two timelines: a present-day storyline in which the demon prince Kaiisteron and his allies uncover a political conspiracy, and a past storyline set roughly sixty-seven years earlier, chronicling the rebellion that overthrew the Hierarchs, powerful rulers who conquered most of the known world.

In the present, Kaiisteron, called Kai, wakes as a disembodied consciousness inside a stone chamber submerged in the sea. Kai is a demon of the Fourth House, his ruling lineage in the underearth, who inhabits borrowed mortal bodies on the surface world. His original body lies dead in a glass coffin nearby. Through a heart pearl, a telepathic link formed from his own blood, he contacts Ziede Daiyahah, a powerful Witch and his closest companion, who is also trapped in the structure.

Five intruders enter, led by an expositor—a sorcerer who draws power from stolen mortal life—named Menlas. They bring two captives: a street child named Sanja and a youth. When the youth dies, Kai seizes the empty body, healing it with the power of his own pain. He kills Menlas by draining his life force, then frees Ziede. Neither remembers how they were captured. Ziede cannot reach her wife, Tahren Stargard, an Immortal Marshall, or high-ranking Blessed commander, known as "the Fallen" for defecting from the Hierarchs. They escape aboard a shell-whale—a giant captive sea creature with a nautilus shell mounted on its back, used as a vessel—enslaved by the expositor.

Kai discovers a silver-white pearl inside his old body's heart, placed without his knowledge, possibly ground into wine. His last memory is of Bashat bar Calis, Prince-heir of Benais-arik, capital of the Rising World coalition, handing him wine. Ziede suspects Bashat orchestrated their imprisonment.

The past begins with Kai living among the Saredi, nomadic grassland people who exchange their recently dead for young demons through an ancient treaty with the underearth. Kai inhabits the body of the late Enna of the Kentdessa clan. When his cousin Adeni is killed by a river creature driven to the grasslands by foreign powers, it marks the first sign of the Hierarch invasion. The Hierarchs soon activate their Great Working, a devastating weapon that kills most of the Saredi and their allies. The passage to the underearth is sealed, and Kai's world is destroyed.

In the present, Kai sends his spirit to the underearth, where his Grandmother, a mortal-demon ancestor, tells him about Witch cells, ancient containment structures that could hide even an Immortal Marshall. She teaches him the cantrips to open them. He confirms their home, Avagantrum, is safe, but Tahren has not been seen.

An Immortal Blessed ship pursues them. The Immortal Blessed are a sacred warrior order with magical ships. Kai boards the vessel and finds mortals locked in a life-well, a magical construct called an intention that drains their lives to power the ship. He kills the expositor Aclines, frees Tenes, a Witch enslaved by Aclines as a familiar, and takes control. Also aboard is Ramad, a vanguarder, or spy-inspector, serving Bashat. Under interrogation, lords from the rival city-state of Nient-arik reveal the conspiracy: Their leadership orchestrated the entombment to disrupt the coalition renewal, the periodic reaffirmation of the Rising World alliance.

The past continues at the Hierarchs' Summer Halls. Bashasa Calis, Prince-heir of Benais-arik and a hostage for his city-state's compliance, rescues Kai from the Cageling Demon Court, a rain-soaked prison for captured demons. Bashasa proposes an alliance. He introduces Kai to Ziede, who infiltrated the palace to avenge her destroyed cloister, and to Tahren, who defected to save her brother Dahin from sacrifice to the Hierarchs' Well, the power source fed by Blessed lives. The group begins planning rebellion.

When Cantenios, a Hierarchs' expositor, encounters Kai in Bashasa's quarters, Kai kills him in a burst of rage, forcing immediate action. Ziede blocks the water supply to the Cageling Court, and Kai frees the imprisoned demons while Tahren deflects crossbow bolts. They storm the Temple Halls with Bashasa's soldiers. Bashasa kills one Hierarch. Kai fights through the Great Working's crushing force and drains the High Expositor, but someone drives a cursebreaker, a weapon that disrupts demonic power, into his spine. Kai involuntarily transfers out of Enna's destroyed body into the dying expositor Talamines, discovering hybrid powers: He can drain life like a demon and create intentions powered by his own pain.

The freed demons reject Kai for violating the covenant against taking a living body. Arn-Nefa, a Kanavesi Saredi demon he believed dead, tries to drain his life and fails, then turns away. Kai uses his new abilities to locate the second Hierarch. Disguised as Talamines, he infiltrates the Hierarch's court, finds Dahin captive, and activates a stolen water intention that floods the Summer Halls. He kills the second Hierarch and escapes with the severed head.

In the present, Ziede summons the Immortal Marshall Saadrin through the ship's link to the Well of Thosaren, sacred power source of the Immortal Blessed. Saadrin denies involvement and suggests that finding stones at the Conventiculum at Stios, the Blessed governing seat, could locate Tahren. Kai and Ziede suspect a trap and plan instead to retrieve a finding stone from the flooded Summer Halls.

They flee upriver on a ghost barge—a vessel magically reconstructed from a rotted hull—when Immortal Blessed arrive. Ramad joins uninvited. At the ruins, they find Dahin secretly camping inside. He reveals a unique enamel map that may show the way to the Hierarchs' homeland, and he fears they could return.

Kai dives into the flooded corridors and locates the finding stone, but enemies arrive on an ascension raft, a Blessed flying craft. Among them is Arnsterath, revealed to be Arn-Nefa, who took an expositor's body after the war and was imprisoned for decades by the Nient-arik. She tracked them using Ziede's blood and trapped Ziede with a stasis intention. Kai freezes the Immortal Blessed Faharin with the stolen intention, and Dahin kills Faharin with a Blessed blade. They escape on the raft while Tenes breaches the earthwork wall below, unleashing a torrent. Kai frees Arnsterath's enslaved familiar by crushing the Saredi sigil used as a binding token.

Kai confronts Ramad with the truth: Bashat poisoned him with pearl-laced wine and allowed the Nient-arik to entomb Kai, Ziede, and Tahren, removing them from the political scene. Ramad admits it. But Kai reveals that five years earlier, he already persuaded the Enalin provinces to withdraw support for Benais-arik's imperial authority. The Rising World has been restructured as the coalition of free allies Bashasa always intended. Bashat's betrayal was pointless. Bashasa's dying words to Kai were: "Don't let everything we fought for be for nothing." Ramad remains behind at a trading outpost.

The past concludes with the rebels' escape. Bashasa leads a convoy of wallwalkers, giant beasts of burden, across the countryside. Kai and Ziede bury Enna in a Witch cairn, a stone burial mound prepared with Witch ritual; Bashasa had ordered Tahren to carry her body out because "he thought you wouldn't want her underwater." Tahren helps with the burial, beginning the bond that will define their lives. At the Kagala, a border fort, Bashasa displays the Hierarch heads. Arike soldiers, conscripts from Benais-arik forced into Hierarch legionary service, turn on the usurper Karanis. Kai confesses: "I'm so angry, I could burn the world." Bashasa replies: "Unfortunately, someone else has already burned it. We need to unburn it." He asks Kai to help, and Kai agrees.

In the present, the finding stone leads to the Kagala. Saadrin carries the supposedly unconscious Kai past the guards. He opens Tahren's Witch cell, and she bursts out, confused but unharmed. Tahren and Saadrin defeat the remaining captors.

Kai sits in the stone chair where he once sat with Bashasa. Ziede and Tahren emerge holding hands, reunited. When Ziede asks where they are going, Kai answers: "To find something to unburn." Together, they step into the wind.