Call of Vengeance in the Middle Lands

By willianinnovador Oliveira gibin

"Call of Vengeance in the Middle Lands" drags you through a cracked sky where every choice rewires the board beneath your feet. Nothing is stable—memory, time, or the face staring back at you. Follow Eryk of the Ember Line as he trades sanity for answers, gambles with echoes, and discovers that the deadliest weapon in a ruined world is a question nobody's ready to hear.

• Language: English
• Publisher: willianinnovador
• Release date: Jun 15, 2025
• ISBN: 9798231297641

willianinnovador Oliveira gibin

                   "writer of worlds, my brain and my mind"

Book preview

Call of Vengeance

in the Middle Lands

INTRODUCTION

A lone warrior, Eryk of the Ember Line, watches the sky fracture like glass above the smoking ruins of his village—his first glimpse of the invisible hand that tore his life apart. Whispers curl in the drifting blue-grey haze around Eryk’s head, binding him to a pact of vengeance that will stain his soul darker than the soot on his blade.

Ash drifts across the broken ground like exhausted snow, muting every color but ember-orange. Somewhere beneath the rubble a child’s music box ticks on, hammering a cracked lullaby into the void. Eryk’s ears ring with it; his mind answers with silence sharp enough to draw blood. He kneels, presses two fingers onto the rubble, and feels the lingering warmth of the flames that murdered everyone he ever tried to love. He is not praying—he is memorizing pain, grinding it into bone the way smiths grind charcoal into steel. Vengeance, properly tempered, must cool in its own sorrow before it can bite.

Nightfall comes early where roofs have been ripped away. Stars elbow through ragged clouds, arranging themselves into unfamiliar constellations that only the desperate can read: a crooked hunter, a maimed wolf, a mirror cracked down the middle. Legends insist these patterns change shape when destiny shifts; Eryk sees them wriggle overhead like wounded serpents, hinting that his private war has already reshaped the sky.

He shoulders his father’s dented helm—now more reliquary than armor—and follows a trail of blackened footsteps into the hollow heart of the world. The path is lined by spectral flowers that bloom only in the presence of ruin: ghost-orchids with petals of faint blue fire. They whisper bargains to anyone foolish enough to water them with tears. Eryk does not cry; the flowers wilt in disappointment.

Beyond the valley a crooked keep looms, silhouetted against the moon like a chess piece abandoned mid-match. Citadel Catarath, once a monastery, now a fortress of mirrors. Every corridor inside is paneled with glass so polished it erases the line between reflection and reality. It is said the mirrors were imported from a nameless desert where sand sings to itself at dusk—enchanted to reveal what their owners most regret. Some nights the keep’s lanterns move of their own accord, as though guided by unseen custodians tidying up loose ends in the tapestry of fate.

Eryk approaches its gates not as an intruder but as a riddle given human form. The drawbridge groans, chains juddering like rusty lungs, yet lowers before he speaks a word. The keep has been expecting him—preparing rooms inside his memories, sweeping dust off recollections he abandoned, stocking the larder with his remaining fears. Vengeance tastes best when seasoned with irony.

Chapter 1 – Shattered Dawn

A lone warrior, Eryk of the Ember Line, watches the sky fracture like glass above the smoking ruins of his village—his first glimpse of the invisible hand that has torn his life apart. His pulse pounds like war drums for an army that no longer exists, while the crack overhead throbs with ghost-light, exposing houses tilted at impossible angles, livestock frozen in blackened silhouettes, and a well glowing fever-orange where stones have melted under inhuman heat. The air tastes of copper and unborn thunder; every breath grates his throat with grit and grief. Knees buckling from numbness rather than pain, he forces himself upright and surveys a silence sharper than any blade—no voices, no bread scent, no dusk-laughter ricocheting off cobblestones.

A charred signpost collapses behind him, and instinct flicks his sword up before shame lowers it again; there is no one left to fight. Whoever shattered the sky is counting on his rage to coil inward and consume itself. Sheathing the steel, he presses a bare palm to the warm earth and realizes the attack ended mere moments before his patrol return; someone has mapped his heartbeat.

Across ash-blanketed streets drifts a child’s music box, gears grinding a lullaby warped into menace. Inside a half-collapsed cottage he finds the tiny device miraculously intact, its lid flung open to the wounded heavens. Beneath the spinning ballerina lies a note: When the dancer stops, so will you. Catch me before the song ends. The taunt bristles with playful cruelty. He pockets the message, snaps the lid shut, and the tune cuts off mid-wail. Instantly the fracture flickers: for a heartbeat he sees a tall figure behind the rent—robes flowing like living ink, wielding a quill of pure flame—studying him through celestial glass before the sky knits closed.

Grief demands tears, but grief is patient; instead he kneels, traces a circle in soot, inscribes the Ember sigil—a serpent devouring a torch—then scores a line through its eye, the outlaw’s mark. Spitting onto the symbol, he forges a covenant with no witness but ruin: I will hunt the hand that shattered dawn and answer sky for sky, soul for soul. Whispers coil around his mind—offers of power, clarity, sweet oblivion—but he ignores them; bargains with unseen spirits are goblets of moonlight, dazzling and hollow.

Evidence waits everywhere. Neat ash piles imply controlled burn, not chaotic fire; there are no corpses, so the villagers were taken, not slain; a sulfur thread laces the smoke—alchemy or portal craft. At the settlement’s edge he counts eighteen identical boot prints that end abruptly, as if their wearers stepped off the world. The treeline stands scalded, leaves hissing, trunks bleeding molten sap. Birds lie stunned yet breathing, their white irises seeing nothing until his touch reawakens them into further confusion.

A rustle: a girl, scarcely twelve, emerges with ash-smeared dress and unnervingly serene curiosity. Are you a nightmare? she asks, her voice barely tethered to breath. I might be, he replies. Are you the dreamer? She explains she hid between heartbeats when the world broke and that the flame-quilled scribe writes their shared dream. Her name is Lysa; she is alone. When he asks about the others, she says they have been folded into pages until the author chooses which story to read—her mother folded first. He offers protection, wrapping her in his travel cloak. Together they note a message carved in glowing letters on a tree: Seek Catarath. Mirror meets fire. The notorious monastery-fortress of living