Edmund Ostrander

The winter-locked empire of Tawantiyu is dying. Its emperor has frozen upon the Sun-Throne, leaving no legitimate heir, and the great houses tear at each other for the crown. But the empire's survival depends on a single bloody arithmetic: the roads between cities remain safe only as long as the ancient winter beasts—the Yana-wolves—are fed with imperial tributes. Rumi-qa, a disgraced former soldier who deserted the vanguard for a reason no one accepts, walks the frozen fringes. He alone knows the tribute system is a designed cull, and the great houses intend to expand it to secure their power. A hard deadline approaches: in exactly forty days, the celestial convergence will allow a usurper to permanently claim the Sun-Throne and expand the wolf-pacts. Hunted by the very empire he seeks to save, Rumi-qa must carve a path to the capital to shatter the throne itself, turning the physical dangers of the feral winter against the armies in his way.

Orynthia is a city-state built on a single, terrible necessity. While The Pharsalian Host waits beyond the outer walls with iron and patience, the city survives the encroaching Petrifying Ash only through the continuous burning of Pyrophos, a glowing mineral marrow that keeps human flesh from turning to stone.

But Pyrophos is controlled by the high courts, and policy in Orynthia is settled by blood. The ruling houses own duelists—bound mortal champions who fight in the Sunless Atrium to ratify treaties, dictate grain rations, and pass laws. Justice is not debated; it is bled for.

Praxos is an architect of ruin. A demolitionist by trade, he specializes in bringing down what others think is permanent. He is a man who dismantles reinforced walls and collapses fortified towers with careful grace, gentle with everything except stone and timber. When a sudden shift in the courts threatens to cut off the lower sectors from the Pyrophos supply entirely, Praxos realizes that breaking walls is no longer enough. To dismantle a monopoly that weighs the lives of the poor against the pride of the high houses, he must bring down the entire architecture of the duelists' court.

He will need inside leverage: Xanthes, an owned duelist who has never lost but is beginning to question the cost, and Oenone, a disgraced strategist of the high houses who understands exactly where the system’s load-bearing pillars are. Together, they must trigger a controlled demolition of the city's power structure—before the siege outside breaks in, or the rot takes them all.