Stonehaven

STONEHAVEN
Book One

There's a saying in Stonehaven: God built the mountains. The king built everything else. Nobody questions it. Why would they? The markets are full, the temples are full, the king is just, and the kingdom sits at the exact center of the world's good opinion of itself.

Nafi enrolled in the Royal Knight Academy because he prayed about it and decided it was right. Taif enrolled because his mother wouldn't stop pointing at the recruitment banners. Baro enrolled three days late, wearing a wooden helmet with holes carved into it that he claims repels witches.

It doesn't. It's optics — a workaround for an eye condition nobody's bothered to fix, in a kingdom that would rather let a half-blind boy build his own solution than admit its medicine has limits. Baro knows this. He also knows something else: a set of restricted books in the academy library claims witches' blood can cure exactly his kind of blindness. Seven documented cases. No coordination between them. He thinks it's worth investigating — quietly, carefully, the way he does everything.

He's not the only one paying attention to what Stonehaven would rather people didn't notice. When the king's letter starts talking about legacy instead of peace. When new instructors arrive with new opinions about who the northern territories really belong to. When a thirty-year librarian who knew too much turns up dead, and a conveniently foreign assassin turns up conveniently caught. Nafi and Taif start noticing too.

Three friends. A kingdom that believes its own myth completely. And a war that's about to prove some myths are built to be spent.

Stonehaven doesn't know it's cracking yet.

It's about to find out.