Throne of Ash and Shadow: A Serpent’s Curse (The Ashsworn Legacy: Book 1)

By HAMZA GHOBI

The world dies in whispers. A kingdom rots from within.

A magical plague known as the Blight sweeps the land, turning everything to sterile ash. In the heart of a dying forest, Lyra, a reclusive healer, can feel the world's last breaths. She wants nothing of the world of men and their treacherous courts, but when a royal messenger collapses on her doorstep bearing a poisoned secret, she is dragged into the heart of a conspiracy that will drown the kingdom in shadow.

The king is dying, not of sickness, but of a treason whispered in the dark. Duke Valerius, the serpent master, tightens his grip on the throne, using his ruthless assassins, the Ashsworn, to silence any who would oppose him.

Now, Lyra is forced to flee with Kael, a grim royal guard sworn to the old ways. Together, they must embark on a desperate quest across a broken world. They seek not a crown, but a cure; not glory, but hope. But in a world where the shadow consumes the light, survival itself may be an impossible victory.

A Serpent's Curse is the first book in The Ashsworn Legacy, an epic fantasy series perfect for fans of dark magic, political intrigue, and the resilient power of hope against impossible odds. If you love the works of Brandon Sanderson, Robin Hobb, and Joe Abercrombie, you won't be able to put this book down.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Lulu.com
• Release date: Sep 20, 2025
• ISBN: 9781326700614

Book preview

Prologue

The Ash and the Serpent

The age of green was a memory, a story told to children who had never seen an unstained leaf. Now was the age of ash. A fine, grey powder settled like a death shroud upon the Kingdom of Eldoria, choking the fields and turning the great Greywood to a skeletal ruin. The anima—the lifeblood of the earth—had grown thin and toxic, and the sky wept only grey rain. The land was dying, for its King was already lost.

King Theron, the Oak of the North, had not fallen to a blade or a plague, but to a creeping shadow upon his soul. The Royal Healers named it the Wasting Sickness, for they had no name for a curse that hollowed a man from the inside out, leaving a paranoid, whispering husk on the throne. The sacred pact between sovereign and soil was a two-way street; as the King’s mind crumbled, so too did his kingdom. His slow descent into madness was the wound through which the world’s vitality bled away.

Into this vacuum of power crept the serpent. Duke Valerius, a man whose ambition was a cold and patient poison, rose through the court. His sigil—a serpent consuming itself—became the new symbol of authority in Ashfall’s halls. The Duke’s whispers were more potent than the King’s decrees, and fear was the currency of his new order. An ancient, hungry magic, smelling the decay of the crown, answered his call and became the instrument of his will.

This dark magic was the genesis of the blight. It was the serpent’s venom, injected into the heart of the anima itself. The rivers turned sluggish and black, the birds fell silent, and the very air grew heavy with a quiet despair that seeped into the hearts of the people. Hope became a luxury, then a memory. The world was not merely dying; it was being unmade, remade in the image of shadow and rot.

Yet, the oldest prophecies spoke of such a time. They warned that when the land was poisoned from its throne, when a nameless evil came to devour hope itself, the world’s fate would rest upon a single, hidden ember. A spark of the pure, untamed anima, forgotten by the world of men. The power to either ignite a cleansing fire or be smothered forever. The serpent was coiled tight around the crown, the King was a ghost on his throne, and in the heart of the dying Greywood, the last ember of hope knew nothing of the fire she was meant to become.

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Chapter 1

The Serpent’s Blight

The Greywood did not whisper anymore; it choked. Lyra felt the sickness in her own bones, a brittle ache that mirrored the dying forest. Where vibrant moss had once carpeted the forest floor in emerald plush, there was now only a fine, silver ash that rose in listless puffs with every footstep. The leaves of ancient oaks, once broad and green, were edged with a creeping, veinous black, crumbling at the slightest touch. A profound and unnatural silence had fallen over the woods, the songs of birds and the chatter of squirrels replaced by a hollow stillness that felt heavier than any sound. It was the silence of a slow, inevitable death.

For twenty years, this forest had been her sanctuary, her tutor, and her only companion. Old Elspeth, the woman who had found her as a swaddled babe left at the forest’s edge, had taught her the old ways. She had learned to read the language of the leaves, to understand the moods of the wind, and to draw on the anima of the woods—the quiet, thrumming life force that connected all things. Now, drawing on that energy felt like drinking from a poisoned well. It came with a residue of despair, a cold dread that clung to her spirit long after she had healed a wounded rabbit or coaxed a struggling sapling to grow.

She moved through the trees with a familiar, fluid grace, her worn leather boots making no sound on the ashen ground. Her task this morning was to check the night-snares, though she had little hope of finding anything. The animals had grown scarce, either succumbing to the blight or fleeing to healthier lands that seemed to shrink with every passing season. As she knelt to inspect an empty loop of twine, a sound shattered the oppressive quiet—not the natural snap of a twig, but the violent, splintering crash of undergrowth being torn apart by a desperate weight. Her heart seized in her chest. Nothing moved this recklessly in the Greywood anymore.

Lyra flattened herself behind the broad trunk of a petrified ironwood, her hand instinctively going to the small carving knife at her belt. The crashing grew louder, closer, punctuated by ragged, agonizing breaths. Then, a figure burst into the clearing. He was a man, clad