Book I

Ashes of Neon

One brother will destroy the world. The other, might be able to save it. But neither know of each other, or their fates. 

Tbis coming-of-age story, is set in a world where magic is rare, technology raises cities into the sky, and the planet is dying. These fifteen-year-old brothers, Lydaer and Kain, have a long way to go before they learn about their destiny, but their story starts here. 

Tragedy follows Lydaer, who’s made an orphan a second time as his adoptive parents abandon him and blame him for the death of his adopted sister. He’s as ordinary as can be, and finds himself enrolled in an academy for the Primordial Arts…

Kain worships the heroic Emperor Heir, only to witness a terrorist attack that takes the Heir’s life. His father is blamed for the regicide, and Kain’s privileged life as the son of a State Consul is upended.
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The story is perfect for fans of genre-bending authors like Leigh Bardugo, Jay Kristoff, Brandon Sanderson, and Tamsyn Muir. It’s inspired by classic epics like Dune, Star Wars, and the Books of Earthsea.

Excerpt from the latest draft of 'Ashes of Neon'

Prologue

Mother

​The cries of her babes underscored the savage storm that raged over Angelus City. She wanted to shout for help, to plead for it, but she knew her screams would only reach the ears of those hunting her. She refused to give up the faint hope she clung to.
 
She held both babies tightly, one in each arm, as she stumbled around piles of concrete shards, boxes of reinforcement mesh and buckets of wires and plaster. The whole wing had recently been closed for renovations, but only the demolition crews had started any work. She was surrounded by disassembled rooms and pulled-down corridors; some walls were stripped down to nothing but frames lined with ducts and wiring. Still, the dark, rubble-filled construction zone was better than the luminescent hallways of the functional hospital wings. She preferred the quiet dark to the corridors crowded with doctors, nurses, and cameras.
 
She turned a corner and almost tripped over a heap of steel rods, then stopped as she stared out at the other skyscrapers stretching into the night. Like the internal partitions, half the outer walls had been torn down. The only thing between her and a ten-storey drop were plastic sheets billowing violently with every shift of the wind. 
 
She heard the city’s ambience, bustling and breathing between gusts and gales. Engines roared, horns blared impatiently, and people yelled at each other from the sidewalks. Angelus never slept; it was the city of eternal insomnia.
 
She gasped as red splashed around her. The inky black scurried into shadows as the ominous light flickered, pulsing a deep scarlet. Usually, she hated the darkness, fearing what dwelt there, but the flashing lights and distant sirens meant that they were closing in on her. She was terrified of what might happen next, even more than her fear of the dark. Her other fears were dwarfed by the idea of her children being stolen.
 
Cursing at herself, more with growls than words, she searched for an exit.
 
She started to run. The red lights illuminated the obstacles in her way as she hurried down the dilapidated corridor that stretched parallel to the exposed exterior wall.  She allowed herself to look back only when she got to the end. She couldn’t see anyone but felt a shiver creep along her back and knew they were coming.
 
She knew he was coming.
 
She burst through a tarp that dangled from an archway and found herself in a vast, open space. The wrecking crew hadn’t gotten far, so the area was still somewhat identifiable as a waiting room. The skeleton of a large reception desk spread across the rear wall, and rain came down through the plastic sheets flapping in gale-force winds. Two pyramids of chairs filled the room, rickety pyramids of plastic and metal that, with a touch, might scatter across the floor.
 
Then she saw a flickering blue light, a shining beacon among a sea of red. It took her a moment to realise it was an exit sign. She had found her escape.
 
She shushed her babies as their cries grew louder and hurried towards the large doors. When she reached the exit, what little hope she had dissipated into despair; the doors would not open. She braced her feet, tucked her boys close, and then, like a siege ram, drove her shoulder hard into the doors, then again, then a third time. She braced again and threw all her weight against the doors one more time. They remained steadfast. All she had for her effort was a throbbing pain in her shoulder.
 
She searched for another exit, eyes darting in all directions. The emergency lights bathed her in crimson.
 
There was nowhere to go except back.
 
“Ma’am?”
 
A voice echoed through the deserted wing, crackling from an outdated loudspeaker system. “We need you to return to the nativity room. We need to ensure your sons are healthy. Security has the floor on lockdown, ma’am. Let them help you.”
 
She knew they didn’t want to help her; they wanted to take her boys away. To keep them. Her sons belonged to her, and she to them. The Perfect had ignored her when she told him that he was after her; the nurses smiled courteously and continued their job. The security guard whose attention she’d managed to gain just gave a condescending nod and kept on his way. No one had believed her.
 
She turned back the way she had come, only to kick her foot against something hard. She felt a sharp pain curl up her ankle from her toes, and her knee started to buckle, but she stayed standing. “Godsdammit,” she fumed. She looked down at a toolbox and took a step away, wincing in pain as she put weight on the foot she had just kicked.
 
Her boys’ cries were so loud that the approaching footsteps sounded far away. The rhythm of raindrops against the building quickened. The only reprieve from the constant beat was a clap of thunder that reverberated between the skyscrapers.
 
She hobbled forward. The pain from her foot was sharp; she’d never been stabbed, but she imagined her pain felt like that.
 
She turned around, and the plastic behind the reception desk fluttered faster, trying to tear itself away from its fixture. She saw something behind it glistening. She limped towards it as quickly as possible.
 
She tore the plastic back and saw Angelus before her. Millions of bright lights struggled to keep the heavy darkness of the night from engulfing the city. She looked down and saw scaffolding, slick from rain, leading up along the side of the hospital.
 
Without a moment’s hesitation, she stumbled into the loud night.
 
The scaffolding swayed as she stepped onto it, and the city seemed to waver beneath her, rocking in the storm. She held her babies close, then refused to look down as she hurried onward as fast as she dared.
 
A wet haze blanketed the city. Beyond the skyscrapers, there was nothing but a dense blot of night. Angelus was one of the largest cities in the world. Still, it felt minuscule compared to the goliath storm of rain and thunder that was bearing down upon it.
 
As she reached the roof, the sky cracked open.
 
She thought the sun had broken through the night for a moment or that she’d witnessed some grand demonstration of magic and power. She could see the city spread out around her, a web of metropolis, the culmination of industrial and societal advancement. Hundreds of buildings surrounded her, all reaching toward the sky. The apartments were overstuffed with people, and the corporate towers were covered in familiar logos. Vivid billboards were plastered around half the other skyscrapers; regardless of the businesses or homes within, they seemed nothing more than structures for pushing products and brands. Cars still filled the sky, hurrying in their own directions, crisscrossing around the city like a non-stop current.
 
Then the lightning faded, followed by a boom of thunder so deep she could feel it shake her very bones. Her babies’ cries got louder, as did the storm.
 
She hobbled over the roof, then turned one way, then another. There was nowhere else to go. The rain fell hard; anguish soaked through her like the wet that drenched her clothes.
 
There was no door and no exit, nor any other way down.
 
Her parents were religious, in a deep-fear kind of way, so she knew the prayers. She fell to her knees and prayed for the first time in a decade.
 
To the Light, to the Dark, and to the All and Everything.
 
She begged only for her sons to be okay.
 
She held her baby boys close, wanting their last memory of her to be infused with warmth.
 
“I love you.” Her soft voice cracked, lost among wind and rain. “My little princes. Kain,” she smiled at the black-haired boy. “Lydaer,” she grinned at her white-haired son. “My beautiful boys.”
 
Her body was going numb from the storm. She didn’t even realise how much she shivered until the winds softened. Her babies calmed, and the rain slowed to a light drizzle.
 
Then she felt a presence like a shadow falling across a dark room.
 
He was behind her. 
 
His familiar ghostly existence wrapped around her. “Your fate is. Was. Decided.” His broken sentences sounded as alien as always. “All fates. Decided.” His words cut through the storm with ease, as if the night belonged to him.
 
“Please…” she begged, looking up from her knees.
 
“You birthed the Seeds. You are done.”
 
“They need me,” she pleaded. “I need them.”
 
Nate was tall and gaunt; his skin seemed thin and stretched over nothing but bone. His eyes were hollow, devoid of the love she now realised he had feigned for her while she was pregnant. He had found her living on the street, young and alone, except for the twins growing inside her. Nate took her in. She’d thought he was a guardian angel or at least some old man who had lost his granddaughter too soon and was making amends. He sheltered her, fed her, kept her healthy, safe, and warm, and asked for nothing in return. But the moment her sons had left her body, so too had kindness left his.
 
He was neither furious nor sad; Nate looked down at her like one would gaze upon an insect.
 
“I loved you,” she whispered. Her parents had kicked her out when she got pregnant. Nate had been a better parent than they ever had. He was her saviour. When the rest of the world gave her nothing, Nate had given her that which mattered most: hope.
 
Now, he took it away.
 
Nate leaned close, his pointed face almost sitting on her shoulder. “You would show love. When you should despair. And despair. When love.” He coughed. “That cannot be their path.” He growled as he spoke, the words almost guttural.
 
“I’m their mother!” she hissed. “You’re not taking them!”
 
“My child,” Nate smirked, “I already have.”
 
She saw into Nate’s soul, and she saw nothing.
 
Silence surrounded her; all she could hear was her own heart racing.
 
She pleaded one last time, but choked on the words.
 
“Universe is. Spectrum.” Nate coughed, and then he lowered his voice to a whisper. “Protected by cores.” He licked his dry lips. “Their war…Peace.” He coughed again. “The Cores need life. They are seeds. Seeds of Equilibrium. Living a cycle, eternal.”
 
“My boys…”
 
Nate nodded.
 
“That cycle. Ends.” A gleam of light was in Nate’s eyes as he said this last word.
 
She could make out the sounds of heavy boots ascending the scaffolding; she hoped they’d help her, but knew they wouldn’t.
 
“My princes are the ‘seeds’…?”
 
“Yes.”
 
“For what end? To save people?” She asked, confused.
 
“They will.” Nate paused. “Kill everyone.”
 
She refused to let her sons live in a world where they would be killers; if she couldn’t have them, neither could he. In defiance of the universe, she threw herself forward. Her foot ached, and her shoulder throbbed, but she knew it needed to hurt only a moment more. She scrambled to her feet and ran for the edge of the building. She tasted her tears in the rain as water streamed down her face.
 
She jumped.
 
Strong hands snatched her from the edge. Two mountainous men pulled her back and threw her hard onto the roof. Her whole body ached, and she felt dizzy as her head hit hard against the concrete. The babies screamed as the storm raged on.
 
Still, she thrashed. Her motherly strength was almost a match for the two men.
 
Almost. 
 
Slowly, a Perfect walked towards her; it was the doctor who had delivered her sons. His face had been bright and kind, but now it looked troubled and sad. Behind him, strangers held her children.
 
“Please,” she breathed. “He’s done something to them - he’s doing something.”
 
“Who?” the Perfect asked, pulling a needle from his pouch.
 
“Nate. Nate is - ”
 
It was too late. She felt a prick in her neck, and everything became lighter.
 
Her cries softened.
 
Her heartbeat slowed.
 
Three days later, she was dead.