Sylphad

Artesh Cooper believed he could outrun the life he was born into.

He was wrong.

And someone from a hundred cycles in the future bet everything on him trying.

Long before the Sapphire was discovered, another Stone had already begun to stir.

Pulled from the slums of Hansworth just before his thirteenth birthday, Artesh survived an attack at sea and crossed the desert to Sandscarath - a city divided into six ancient kheth where knowledge is power and nothing comes without cost. Now eighteen, he bears the title of Emissary and is bound to Occo, a strange desert owl that watches the world as if it remembers it.

When a conclave of Embers descends on Sandscarath days before his rite of passage, ancient seals crack beneath the sand. Drawn into a hidden world below the desert, Artesh is driven toward Q'Serath - a sentient city in the clouds where the Opal has waited centuries to be claimed.

But the Stones were never meant to be taken easily.

What he finds there will force him to decide who he is willing to become - and that choice may cost him everything that makes him human.

Sylphad is a prequel to Shifter and Book Two of The Stone Wardens, an epic fantasy saga in which ancient Stones awaken across the realm - and those who wield them will shape its fate.