The Sunken Sands

In a world where reality is Ink and magic is Authorship, the greatest crime has been committed: the ocean has been edited out. The Chronicles of the Seven Chains: The Sunken Sands follows Kaelen, the Catalyst and wielder of the Star-metal Quill, as he leads the First Chain—a band of destined heroes—into the desolate void left behind by the vanished sea. Where once deep currents flowed, now lies the Sunken Sands, a nightmare landscape of petrified coral, glass dunes, and monsters born from the margins of rejected manuscripts. The Chain is a brotherhood of disparate souls: Elara, the righteous Paladin; Barak, the stone-skinned Anchor; Silas, the Ranger bearing a heavy burden of lineage; and Nyx, a thief seeking vengeance for her dehydrated village. Together, they must navigate a world where the laws of physics are fraying. They face "Redaction Storms" that erase existence, hunt "Redactor-beasts" with shells made of condensed narrative, and sail the dangerous salt-flats on the Dust-Strider, a ship built to skate on bone-runners. Their destination is the Golden City, the seat of the Merchant King, Lord Argent Vane. Vane has imprisoned the Azure Dragon, the embodiment of Mystery and Depth, draining its essence to manufacture "Liquid Gold"—a fuel that powers his empire of absolute, sterile order. He has privatized the weather, stolen the rain, and turned the world into a ledger where life is merely a variable to be optimized. As Kaelen and his companions infiltrate the opulent capital, they uncover a conspiracy that spans the metaphysical boundaries of their world. They must fight not just soldiers of glass and gold, but the very concept of a profitable tyranny. The cost of rebellion is devastatingly high. Facing the Merchant King means confronting the seductive power of order and the terrifying chaos of the Deep. In a climax that shatters the city and rewrites the genre of the biome itself, Kaelen must use his Author-magic to wake the sleeping Dragon. But freedom demands a sacrifice, and the ocean's return will require an Anchor to hold the line against the flood. High-stakes fantasy meets metaphysical thriller in this epic tale of ink, magic, and the ultimate price of writing your own destiny.