The Iron Psalter

Kaelan Voss once wore the silver stole of a high confessor. Now he wears a heretic's brand. For five years he has survived in the soot-choked warrens of Vosthyr as a back-alley scribe, keeping his head down and his grief buried. His sister Lysara is ash. Burned at the stake by his own order for wielding unsanctioned magic. And Kaelan lit no candle for her. He said nothing. He let it happen. That is the wound that will never close. Then his nine-year-old niece, Miri, collapses with the first silver sheen of the Iron Psalm — a curse that slowly transfigures living flesh into an immovable, sentient statue of steel. The Church calls it divine judgment. The physicians call it hopeless. Kaelan calls it a deadline. He trades his last coin for the Codex Ferrum — a grimoire so heretical its mere possession is a death sentence. The book promises mastery over the very curse consuming Miri. The book also speaks. Its margins bleed with incantations. Its voice is seductive, ancient, and terrifyingly familiar. To wield its power, Kaelan must recover the Sundered Blade — a legendary sword shattered into three fragments and hidden across a continent that worships iron as the flesh of a dead god. But every psalm he recites tightens a noose around his soul. A relentless inquisitor with eyes like winter stone hunts him city by city. A cynical mercenary mage with her own debt to the book's master offers an alliance neither of them fully trusts. And the deeper Kaelan digs into the Codex's secrets, the clearer the truth becomes: the voice behind every verse belongs to the man who condemned Lysara to the pyre. The same man who now calls Miri his final, perfect vessel. Kaelan must choose: surrender the grimoire and let his niece become an iron monument to a monster's ambition — or finish the Codex's final, unspeakable psalm and risk becoming the very evil that destroyed his family. The Iron Psalter is a dark, immersive epic fantasy about faith weaponized against the faithful, a rebel mage's impossible bargain, a found family forged in desperation, and the crushing weight of a power that costs more than blood. Perfect for readers who love grimdark epic fantasy, rebel mage antiheroes, found family dynamics, dark magic systems, and fans of Mark Lawrence and Leigh Bardugo. An epic standalone fantasy of magic, sacrifice, and destiny.