Hello, hello! I'm Ren Tachibana, a featured fantasy writer here on Wattpad and a winner of a 2016 Watty for my novel Bereft (yay!). Some of my novels creep into the top twenty of the fantasy category, including Bereft and other books of the Bereft Series and Mark of the Harbinger, which is where you may know me from. Otherwise, I am just another author in a sea of orange who is thrilled to be joining the Block Party this summer! Thanks, Kelly!

For my post, I'm sharing with you guys the very first chapter in the newest book in my Bereft Series, Bereft: Ignite.

"But wait, Ren! I haven't read Bereft or any of the other stories in the series!" That's okay! This post is spoiler free, so you can kick back, relax, and enjoy!

PROLOGUE | KING & KINGDOM

The echo of his footsteps rebounded through the gray hall like the ringing of a great bell.

Elias marched with his mouth pursed in repressed frustration, his posture stiff and unyielding as the flat heels of his black boots struck the stone floor with considerable force. The sound warned those within earshot of his irritable temper, and—as he passed one of his servants with a grim nod—the young man bent at the waist and scuttled into the shadows once more.

He walked from the hall to a stark corridor and beyond. The silver chandeliers overhead dripped blue crystals and thin chains of enchanted lights. From the gray walls, portraits of his fair faced ancestors and missed children marked his hurried passage, their cyan eyes alive with a malign humor known only to the dead.

Elias came at last upon a set of gilded doors, beyond which hummed a morass of magical energies woven and overlapping in intricate patterns. The Vytian hesitated with his hand upon the door's crystal handle as the implicit music of the energies reached out to him, playing their many fine-fingered hands across his skin, whispering the secrets of old spells long sleeping in rotted grimoires and forests untrodden by his kind for generations.

Such a sensation was unsettling in its power and beauty.

He shook himself and stepped inside.

Light poured from the western windows and laid lines of orange and gold upon the oratory's floor. Beneath the decorated transom rested the two altars of the family's patron Kings. To the left was a statue of a three-eyed stag, yellow wildflowers thrown at its carved hooves. To the right was a banner depicting a skull and mandible encircled by a wreath of twisting ivy.

Dust crawled upon the stone pews and dripped from the brackets of unlit torches. Empty for a dozen years or more, only one king could be found in the disused oratory now. He knelt in the middle of the nave, working without complaint, the stick of chalk scraping upon the pitted stones.

"My lord," Elias said as he took in the rest of the circles lain upon the columns, the floor, and the high walls. Each had been created with painstaking effort, measured and redrawn, emboldened by double lines and dark paint. Some of the designs had already been activated, and from them arose that malaise of ancient, amoral magics, their lines incandescent in the sunlight as they glimmered with aching splendor.

So many designs. So many constructs and creations even Elias didn't know the origins of, each a labor of determination, a penance marked upon stone.

The King of Vyus rose from the nave, the golden light bathing one side of his lithe form as he turned to face Elias. Dressed from head to foot in the black and silver colors of House Vyus, the man was an image of regality with a circlet of filigreed Vytian silver, veinimin, upon his brow and a ceremonial sword at his hip. His hair was unbound and framed his winsome face in careless, velvet strands.

"My lord—," Elias began again as he placed a hand upon his heart and dipped into a brief bow. "I was told you rushed from the council meeting. Your departure was premature...again."

"Was it?" Anzel replied, distracted by the blemishes of paint and chalk left on his slender fingers. He picked at it with disinterest. "You know how they tend to ramble. My attention wasn't necessary."

He walked, and did so with care, his narrow boots placed in specific areas left bare of chalk, the hem of his cloak pinned at his throat so it wouldn't drag upon the floor. Elias refrained from following, lest he disturbed his king's work.

"Anzel," he softly admonished with his eyes on the younger's man's back. "You spent four hundred years struggling to get where you are. Your rule is young, and much of the council is yet uneasy with the new direction of leadership."

"Is that not what you're here for, spymaster?" Anzel asked as his hand grazed one of the etched pillars. Fresh energy was riled by the king's touch, unwinding in thin tendrils as it imbued the constructs laid there with shimmering light. "To keep the naysayers silent and to be my unseen blade in the dark?"

"Naturally." Elias inclined his head, though his eyes didn't leave the Vytian king. "I and my House are your most devoted servants, but you should not squander your time—."

"I am not squandering my time." Anzel's movements became sharper, more agitated, as he came to the oratory's center and stood within an empty circle. The constructs spiraled outward from that station in very specific sequences, the culmination of half a year's effort spent creating these designs.

Elias was quiet but firm in his response. "There is no guarantee she yet lives, my king."

Anzel knelt upon the stone floor, laying his fingers upon the dormant rune seated at the head of his multifaceted creation. "I will attend as many inconsequential meetings and entertain any number of vapid councilors you deem worth my time after I conclude my spell. Today is the day, and I know it'll work." His arms moved, hands splayed out across the sketched rings as silent words of invocation fell from his trembling lips. "Because I have hope that my myopic mistakes haven't destroyed her."

He rose in a tense whirl of silk and clanking metal as the energy contained within the constructs was given direction, rising and falling through the various channels and strictures outlined by the king's runes, imbuing the air with the heady taste of the wilds. Elian leaned upon the door at his back as the smell of primal, verdant things took his breath away.

The lines etched and painted upon every surface of the oratory were burnish in a vivid silver light and magic ascended to a fevered crescendo that had Elias's heart racing in his chest. In an instant, the intensifying crush of the energy was severed, and the blinding light dwindled until only the spots in the Vytian's eyes remained in its memory. Just like that, the spell had been spent, the constructs dissolving into nothing.

The King of Vyus plucked a demure box of orange heartwood from the nave's floor, covering it in brown paper and twine as his lithe fingertips traced invisible wards into the package's wrappings. The little package hummed with the imminent, contained energy compiled over months of careful spellwork, but it soon settled beneath Anzel's touch until it was innocuous once more.

Anzel lifted the box to the ceiling and a hawk with crimson feathers splashed across its breast swept from the rafters, its curled talons hooking through the bound twine as it snatched the package from the Vytian's upheld palm. In a flurry of gold-flecked plumage, the creature screeched its approval before diving out the chimney and disappearing into the growing twilight.

With the Druid gone, the king and his spymaster stared at one another, wordless. Elias folded his hands together behind his back and inclined his head in solidarity as Anzel approached. The younger Vytian drew level with Elias, and the spymaster allowed his unspoken question—his unspoken plea—to enter his cyan eyes.

Will it work? Will you bring her here?

"It will," Anzel answered in a tone harboring no plausible doubt. It was the voice of a king uttering his decree, handing out undeniable judgement. "I will bring Sara here. I swear it to you, Elias."

He swept by without another word, and the solid rhythm of his gait dwindled into the corridor's depths. Elias lingered to close the oratory doors, his gaze flicking to the windows and the dying light of sunset warming the panes.

"I hope you are right, Anzel," he murmured. "I hope you are right."

The Gaspard patriarch sealed the oratory once more and followed after his determined king.

* * *

I hope you enjoyed that sneak peek! Bereft: Ignite is the fourth book in The Bereft Series, and I'm very excited to be beginning a brand new adventure in this story.

Until we meet again,

Ren Tachibana

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