Twenty years after the events of The Village, an uneasy peace holds on the Veridian frontier — until the demon-driven Ironclad Empire comes for the coast. Jarek Thornwood, son of a legend, inherits the war his elders left unfinished, armed with the one class everyone calls broken: a power that shifts at random, is never the one he needs, and costs him a memory for every working.
The Tempering is generational progression fantasy in the tradition of Cradle and He Who Fights With Monsters, with a difference: nothing here is a system. Every class, blessing and level is a divine act by a god with motives, powered by mortal belief, and the price of victory is paid by people, one name at a time. Nine books, from first skirmish to the sacrifice at the Master Gate.
The Books
Book 1
First Blood
The altar gave him Scribe when he prayed for Warrior, and the class will not hold still. Then a burning city reveals what twenty years of failure was actually forging.
Coming soon
Book 2
The Bleeding
Tilde Valdris takes the lens. When the general freezes before an impossible fleet, the soldier who has spent a decade caging the monster inside her stops caging it and learns to aim.
Coming soon
Book 3
Enemy Waters
Ryn grew up in the house of the man who built the war. Now he sails a crew of misfits into enemy waters to steal the truth from the throne itself.
Coming soon
Book 4
The Trap
An enemy that predicts every power thrown at it has one blind spot: a man whose class changes at random and is never the same twice. The Shifting finally looks like a weapon.
Coming soon
Book 5
The False Rebellion
A routine tally of the war dead refuses to add up. Jarek follows the arithmetic and finds a harvest instead of a war, then gets branded traitor by both sides for saying so.
Coming soon
Book 6
The Liberation
Under occupation, a God-Forge eats the coast's prayers and gives back chains. Jarek has learned this war's bitter arithmetic, and freeing a continent may not take a bigger blade at all.
Coming soon
Book 7
The Old Guard
The supply count would not balance, and the missing weight was design. The rot climbs higher than the front line, until the monster feeding the war turns out to be family.
Coming soon
Book 8
The Stranglehold
The medal was cold before the blood dried. The war is won, yet the mana drains east toward a mountain nobody will look at, and every victory forged a key.
Coming soon
Book 9
The Trinity
Nine years of siege end at a fortress that was never a fortress. Closing the Gate forever will take three things it cannot read, and Jarek loves all three of them.
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