The Aether Warden

Eryndal is a continent that has forgotten what freedom feels like.

For generations the Ruling Species (The Varathos), a reptilian theocratic empire of soldiers, priests and spies, have controlled every road, every settlement, and every life within it. Taxes bleed the population dry. Guilds are outlawed. Resistance is crushed before it can draw breath. The people of Eryndal have learned, slowly and painfully, to keep their heads down and their mouths shut.

Into this world comes John Bonston (Jonny Bongo).

He did not choose to come. He does not entirely remember how it happened. There was a bang, a flash of light, and then a void filled with pale gold light and a figure with impossibly ancient eyes who told him, very calmly, that he was not going home. He has been assigned a class he did not ask for, given a hammer he is still getting used to, and dropped into the middle of a forest in a world he knows nothing about, with no papers, no money, and no idea what the Varathos would do to an unregistered human if they found one.

He is going to find out fairly quickly.

As Jonny navigates a world of occupied towns, ancient ruins, and a resistance movement too small and too frightened to do much resisting, he begins to understand that his arrival was not an accident. Something chose him. Something old and patient that has been waiting in a hidden place for a very long time for exactly the right person to show up.

The question is whether Jonny Bongo, an Airdrie man with a support class, a confusion spell, and an instinct for talking his way out of things, is actually that person.

Book One follows Jonny's first steps in Eryndal, from a forest clearing with nothing but a hammer and two abilities he barely understands, through the brutal reality of life under Varathos occupation, to the discovery of something ancient and hidden that could, if he is careful and lucky and stubborn enough, change everything.

This is not a story about a chosen one who arrives already knowing what he is. It is a story about a man who builds something worth fighting for, one stone at a time, in a world that badly needs someone to try.

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