Dawn of Darkness (The Fall of Sparos Book 1)

Dawn of Darkness

Saving a kingdom, she lost her soul.

In the fading elven kingdom of Sparos, the Grey Plague is spreading fast, leaving the capital gripped by fear and the royal court buried in suspicion, secrets, and quiet schemes. As Royal Arcanist Istar Sereneni searches for a cure, every answer slips further out of reach.

When desperation drives her toward forbidden magic, Istar makes a pact with an ancient power and survives the plague at a terrible cost. Cursed with immortality, strange new abilities, and a hunger she cannot ignore, she must decide whether her transformation is a path to salvation—or the beginning of Sparos’ final ruin.

Blending plague-ravaged high fantasy, political intrigue, divine betrayal, and dark magic, Dawn of Darkness is the first book in the Fall of Sparos series by C.J. Pyrah.

Begin the Fall of Sparos with Dawn of Darkness.

Excerpt from the book

Spring had come early to the Dragons’ Tears Mountains. Though the summits of the curved, jagged peaks still clung jealously to their caps of snow, their lower slopes were bare, save for the emerging speckling of green whose hues echoed the lush grassland of the Verdant Fields to the north. The bright, dancing radiance of the sun beamed down on the city of Penelionar, making its forest of white marbled towers glimmer and shine like shards of light themselves. It was a gorgeous day, one where the citizens of Sparos should have been taking in the gloriously clear azure expanse of the sky, and basking in the warmth that had finally routed the chill of winter.

It was a terrible day for a funeral.

That, at least, was the thought that dominated Istar Sereneni’s mind as her measured steps matched the dour beat of the kettle drum, which was keeping the pace of the funeral cortege. It should have been raining. The sky should have been marred with clouds that kept the joyous face of the sun hidden from this most solemn and mournful occasion.

Like most of those around her, Istar was almost totally subsumed in black mourning robes, which hung from her tall, elegant frame with a heaviness that threatened to drag her down like a net. Whilst the smothering coverage the robes gave her spared her pale skin from the intrusive sunlight; the thick material was beginning to make her sweat. She was glad that the black gossamer veil she wore over her head shielded the sight of the drops of perspiration that were forming around her ebony hairline. The veil also partially protected her delicate blue eyes, which had always erred towards photophobia, but it was not enough to shield them completely from the dazzling flashes of light that reflected off the highly polished helmets and spear tips of the honour guard surrounding them.

As she walked, Istar kept her head bowed to the ground, trying to shield her gaze from as much of the dazzling reflections as possible, which were already causing the first drifting specks and flashes of rainbow colours in her eyes. The overture of a migraine that was threatening to explode at a moment’s notice. She kept focusing on the relentless thud, thud, thud of the drums, and offered up a silent prayer to Sagosa for the strength to keep going, or at least a little bit of cloud cover.

The funeral procession stretched almost a mile in length as it progressed through Penelionar, from the Royal Palace, the city’s highest point, built on a terrace that hugged one of the surrounding peaks, down to the Royal Sepulchre, built into a sheer cliff face at the city’s north-west limits. Crowds thronged every inch of the route. Most stood in sombre, respectful silence, but many shed tears and wept openly and loudly as the carriage bearing the coffin of Queen Antione and its attendant entourage of the members of the Royal Family, the Court, and the Royal Guard filed past. Many of the doors and windows of the grand buildings that lined the route from the Southern Terraces to the Royal Sepulchre had been shrouded with black cloth, which trembled in the breeze and matched the dour fluttering of the black robes of the mourning party and the regalia of the horses pulling the funerary carriage.