Meet the Characters:
Trace Mystoke
Our protagonist. Trace washed up on the bleak shores on Minreth eight years ago, the lone survivor of a sudden storm that capsized five Vassalian warships on a mission for the queen. Though he was a boy at the time, people viewed him with open suspicion. His shock of white hair was strange enough, but it was the unnatural glow in his right eye which stoked their unease.
Now he’s a young man struggling to find his place. His best friend Kyriel, and his caretakers Kandan and Meissa have made Minreth feel like a home, but the hostile mutterings that follow him throughout the day prove he’s far from accepted. Only in the cloisters of the Wilderlands, an untamed forest steeped in superstition, can he find refuge from the village’s scorn.
And, in the shadowy nooks of the forest, he finds something else. Crystals with mysterious lights that invoke an unexpected familiarity, and also gripping fear. Trace dives deeper into the woods hoping one day his search will yield the answer to an enduring question:
Where does he belong?
Kyriel Elysium
Gideon’s daughter and Trace’s only friend. Under the strict tutelage of her father, she’s become an adept Apothecarist. She’s one of a handful of people untroubled by Trace’s glowing eye, and accepts her role as his best friend with the utmost sincerity. She considers it her personal duty to point out Trace’s fallible behavior and rescue him from the depressive bouts of isolation he often falls into.
She’s upbeat and resilient, rarely allowing herself to stop and examine the bitter ache left in the wake of her mother’s death. Instead, she fills her days with work and dreams about opening her own medicinal shop in Lucidus.
Meissa Direnclee
Trace’s caretaker and surrogate mother-figure. She’s been at his side since he was eight, battling laundry, dishes, and the occasional loose-tongued fool brazen enough to ridicule Trace in her presence. She commits to all things with stubborn, no-nonsense aplomb and makes no qualms when it comes to protecting her charge.
To her continuous chagrin, Trace is often the target of her scalding rants when he sneaks home after dark covered in dirt and sweat before she bustles him into a seat by the fire for a thick helping of lander pie.
Rigel
A mysterious man in black being chased by the queen’s soldiers known as the Argents. He’s sarcastic and frolicsome despite the price on his head for high treason, and takes to the social outcast, Trace, for unknown reasons. He’s hiding more than a fancy dagger in his boot and Trace is intrigued by Rigel’s air of mystery. Luckily, the plethora of soldiers set on dragging Rigel back to the capital for his crime haven’t deterred Trace one bit.
Aleftheria
A woman traveling with Rigel. She speaks with authority and eloquence, similar to the highborn ladies of Lucidus, and bears a white, star-shaped scar on her chest. She finds Trace interesting, and isn’t dissuaded by his strange attributes. She’s an odd traveling companion for a fugitive, and Trace suspects there’s more to her story than Rigel’s willing to tell.
El’Nath Neraru
A stoic member of the Dusklander Tribe, the native people of Ara’s Clutch known for the massive wolves they command and their abrasive attitudes towards outsiders. El’Nath is the daughter of a Shaman and one of a select group of Dusklanders who speak the Vassalian language, but does so with visible disgust.
El’Nath is a master warrior and hunter. Her prowess with their cultural weapon–twin crescent-shaped blades–is unmatched. She has trained unceasingly in the hopes of avenging her sister’s murder at the hands of Muhlifain, the queen’s most notorious Handmaiden. Her greatest assets are an indomitable spirit and the loyal wolf at her side, Aldebaran.
Queen Valmyria Elissa Ascalonia
The current Queen of Vassalia, known for her military genius and her ruthless approach to expansion. Her vast spy network operates in every known land, and she is well-known for awarding titles of nobility and riches to her loyalists and acts of human cruelty to oppositionists . She postures the largest naval force in the world to enforce her expansionist agenda, which has inspired terror in those who rise against them and fearful awe from those unwilling to risk conflict. It is said her hand spans the entire Regna sea.
Her grandmother established the colony on Ara’s Clutch, Minreth, seventy years ago to control the only known source of darkwood. A move many questioned because of the public’s fear surrounding the Wilderlands and the feral Dusklanders who called it home.
After several hostile encounters between the colonists and the Dusklanders in recent years, Queen Valmyria and her personal guard–the infamous Handmaidens–burned the Dusklander city Betel’Guarde, along with half its population, to the ground.
To Adorn the Stars 