The Sundering Oath
The Ashreach Wastes are dying, and Seravyn Kael is the last mercenary with enough coin to walk through the rubble. When the tunnel beneath her boots doesn't merely collapse but convulses, stone shuddering along veins of binding magic that no longer hold, she understands that the world's old architecture is failing. Not breaking. Failing. Slowly, grindingly, the way a promise is forgotten. For three centuries, the Oath of the Voss line has kept seven kingdoms bound in a fragile compact. Lord Aldric Voss, the last living lord of that blood, has spent a generation weakening the Oath from within, sundering it fragment by fragment so he can claim the binding magic for himself. His son Caelen has been raised to inherit the sundering. And Seravyn, who swore a mercenary's oath to Maren Ashveil before either of them knew what the Oath truly was, is now the only person in the Wastes who remembers the original terms, because she was the one who wrote them down on the night everything went wrong. Thessaly will come for her. Jorl will try to buy her silence. Dorian will tell her the truth she can't yet bear. And when Lord Aldric finally sunders the last thread, the Wastes will stop shuddering and start splitting, and every kingdom will be free, meaning every kingdom will be at war. Seravyn has one coin left, one broken oath to keep, and one choice: let the magic die and the world tear itself apart, or bind herself to a sundered Oath that will cost her everything she has sworn to protect. The Wastes are settling into rubble. The grinding has not stopped. And the oath, once broken, cannot be remade with the same words.