Phoenix Rising: A Dark Epic Fantasy

Book 1: Feather & Flame

by Beth Ball

Genres: Dark Fantasy; Sword & Sorcery; Epic Fantasy

Synopsis

Throne of Glass meets The Witcher and The Serpent & the Wings of Night in this dark epic fantasy with a fiery heroine, duty-bound hero, and intricate worldbuilding.

Savior. Sacrifice. Survivor.
Rowan knows what she has to do: Harness her elemental magic, revive a lost titan, and restore the ebbing might of her forest home.

But to increase her power, she must ally herself with long-standing enemies, those responsible for her father's death and the weakening of the woods.

And she's not the only one to face the scant choices of a world at war.

Across the Circle Sea, Marcon prepares for his first deployment as a soldier in the Army of Light, led by the famed Tali Silversword, one of the last remaining elemental champions. They return to Sanctuary, the battleground that claimed his parents' lives years before.

Alongside Rowan and Marcon, the threads of fate wrap themselves around a dwarf desperate for redemption, an elf searching for his sister, and a nameless spirit-witch fighting to survive.

Explore a world of fading elemental magic, secret heroes, and brimming war in this enthralling first-in-series dark epic fantasy with magical tattoos, dark academia vibes, destiny, and fated enemies-to-lovers.

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Release date: December 9, 2025

Publisher: Grove Guardian Press

Print pages: 478

Sample

CHAPTER ONE

 

TALI

SANCTUARY

Tali raced down the narrow stone stairs, breath short within her chest. In the courtyard below, Candace and Olivier, twin champions, she a wielder of flame and he of water, faced off against one of Alessandra’s dragon-servants, fearsome creatures blessed in ancient times with elemental magic and might. The twins whirled their swords and scimitars, Candace pure rage, Olivier measured grace and power. The bloody remains of half a dozen soldiers lay scattered across the courtyard around them. The mutilated corpses were all that was left of their allies assigned to the upper ramparts. Sanctuary’s forces, though well trained, were no match for a dragon. Briznexi swirled above the twins, her wings and tail propelling her through the smoke-filled air of the courtyard, while the twins battled her from the ground. “Hold on!” Tali shouted down to them, her voice lost within the clamor of battle. The twins were beyond her encouragement anyway, and if she did not hurry, their bodies would join the piles of the dead. She had to do something. Now. Steeling herself, Tali rose on tiptoes to peer over the railing—Sanctuary had not been designed for dwarves—angling herself so that her arm could stretch over the stone wall. Tali set her teeth, clenching her will, and sent a beam of pure light into Briznexi’s side. She had tried to maintain the element of surprise as long as possible, but Candace and Olivier could no longer wait for her aid. The twins would have been lost to the dragon had not Ilona, her titan, called Tali away from the battlefront at the gates to this surprise attack from the skies. If Briznexi were successful in gaining the towers, Sanctuary’s troops would be routed before the third day of battle had truly begun. The city would fall to Alessandra’s might, and all the souls trapped inside would be hers. Eldura itself—not to mention the tenuous alliances of the Cities United—couldn’t withstand losing one of their own to Alessandra. And so rapid a defeat as this one might be, the others could fall in quick succession. Tali channeled her desperation into the beam, willing it to shatter the dragon’s scales, impale her side. The pure light energy rippled beneath the swirling shadows that clung to Briznexi’s scales before the rays dissipated to nothing. She jumped as the dragon’s voice echoed inside her mind. “Your every strike strengthens me, lightbringer. 

Do you think my mistress retains no control over Ilona’s light?” Tali cried out, stumbling back away from the wall. Heresy. To claim that Alessandra could access even a drop of Ilona’s elemental power—the titan would never allow it. “Liar!” Tali shouted. The dragon chuckled in reply, her laugh rollicking flame and sizzling ember. “You would do well to surrender now and save your friends, Champion of Light.” Briznexi’s tail lashed the ground between the twins. They each dove to the side, away from one another. Tali resumed her sprint down the winding tower stairs. Briznexi was separating them, singling them out. “Stay together,” Tali shouted from the base of the stairs. Candace nodded. Olivier groaned as he extricated himself from the rubble. Briznexi seized her chance. She pirouetted through the air and swept down toward Olivier. He cried out as she broke through his watery shield. With a solid snap of her jaws and a scream from the elf, the dragon veered away. Blood splashed onto the broken stone of the tower, raining down with the dragon’s saliva. Briznexi released Olivier’s severed leg from her maw. It fell onto the courtyard’s stones with a sickening squelch, the first sound Tali registered, so deafening were Olivier’s screams. Blood rushed from his wound, an effect of Briznexi’s poison. “Join my lady, and I will leave one alive,” the dragon growled in Tali’s mind. “Choose. Quickly.” 

“Olivier!” Candace climbed onto the pile of rubble separating her from her twin brother. Motes of flame rained down from her shortswords, each blade wreathed in fire. The fire droplets sizzled onto the crumbled stones on one side of the crevasse Briznexi’s tail had created, a divide as deep at least as the elf was tall. “I will never join you,” Tali shouted back. With two powerful beats of her wings, the shadow-clad dragon thrust herself away from the courtyard. Their one advantage might come if a regiment from the Luz spied Briznexi above the swirling smoke of Sanctuary. Tali’s height prevented her from watching what transpired below. She shot a burst of light into the air, flashing ahead of the dragon’s path, hoping someone below might see. It was the lone chance the three champions might have. Beneath the battering of Briznexi’s wingbeats, Candace stumbled in her scramble across the rocks. She tumbled backward, losing the ground she had gained, and had to run again at the wall of rubble Briznexi had erected between her and her twin. Centuries of craftsmanship, smashed in a moment by the dragon’s tail. Olivier’s screams had ceased. Tali ducked beneath a toppled cart in the center of the courtyard. She stretched out her hand and sent a healing spell to Olivier’s side, but still the elf’s hands slackened around his severed thigh. The pale limestone beneath him turned red as the porous rocks slurped up the fresh blood. 

Time slowed as Briznexi reared back. She pivoted, angling her neck down toward the twins, the one moment she might be vulnerable. Candace’s arms shook as she pushed herself over the wall of rock. She stumbled to Olivier’s side. The elf fell to her knees and pulled her brother’s head onto her lap. “No!” Tali yelled. She had been wrong to tell them to stay together. With a final roar, Tali raised her axe overhead and flung it at the flapping beast, desperate to drive her from the sky. The dragon’s words echoed in her mind, the impossibility that she might not only be immune to Ilona’s light, but made more powerful by it, rather than the shadows that braced her hide . . . Tali stopped herself from casting a spell of light upon the axe as it flew, a great whoosh as it turned end over end, arcing straight for the base of the dragon’s throat, where her poison brewed. Briznexi thumped her wings against the air and dodged out of the way, sending a scatter of rocks across the courtyard as the wind she caused shifted course. “No!” Tali shouted again, her axe missing by inches. Another impossibility, her aim had been perfect. The axe crashed against a failing roof on the opposite side of the square, disappearing in a rain of shingles and tumbling stones. Briznexi’s foul yellow eyes fixed upon Tali amidst the smoke of the battlefield. “I’ll leave you to wonder why you were spared,” the dragon snarled. She lowered her head and exhaled a bright purple stream over the twins.

Candace screamed and leaned closer over her brother, shielding him from the blast. Tali’s lips parted, her own screams dying upon her lips as the elf’s skin, hair, and armor melted. Candace crumpled, a yellow-green husk of rotten flesh with her brother’s ruined legs jutting out beneath her. “Unity is weakness, Tali Silversword,” Briznexi called back within Tali’s mind as she flapped away. “Remember that, until we meet again.” * * * Tali fled the castle of Sanctuary after Briznexi’s departure from the ramparts, the dragon’s words ringing in her ears, Candace and Olivier’s ruined bodies burned across her vision. The fallen bodies of the Luz and their allies choked the hallways. She saved those she could and emerged into the smoky chaos at the base of the castle supporting a battalion soldier beneath the arm. The man collapsed as soon as they reached the edge of the field from where they’d staged their attack. A stallion’s shrill whinny broke through the dragon’s echo, and Tali’s eyes shot up to the black-plumed helmet of one of their allies’ commanders from Vestige. “They need healers back at the camp,” the woman shouted. But something about Tali made her stop. The commander slipped off her helmet and gave a small tug on the reins. Tali stared up at the two of them. Had Candace and Olivier been stationed in Vestige before they all met to train on the outskirts of Respite? Thick black braids wound around the woman’s head. She stared down at Tali and blinked smoke out of red-rimmed brown eyes. “You’ve seen something, haven’t you?” Tali shook her head and the woman’s eyes narrowed. She had never excelled at falsehoods. “I feel it. Here.” The woman placed her middle finger between her eyebrows. “There’s a seer in my camp. She can help you.” “N-no,” Tali answered. “They need me here.” The commander nodded. “I will tell her to expect you, though she likely does already.” The woman bowed her head, met Tali’s gaze, and clicked her tongue to her horse. The two cantered away down the battle lines. Had the dragon cursed her and written her doom, the doom of all Eldura, clearly upon her face? That couldn’t be. She was a lightbringer, one blessed by the power of Ilona. Even a dragon’s curse couldn’t break her bond with the titan. Tali hurried back to the side of the man she’d helped. His leg was bleeding profusely from a wound upon his thigh. Though not as great a torrent as Olivier’s wound had been, the soldier wouldn’t survive if she didn’t act soon. Orange-brown irises blurred and focused on her face, and his head swayed. “Shh,” Tali urged, “lie back.” As gently as she could with hands that would not stop shaking, she pushed his shoulders back toward the ground. “You saved me,” the man murmured in a thick mountain accent. He winced as she tightened a second tourniquet around the top of his leg. “You saved me,” he murmured again. His eyes rolled back in his head, and he lay still. ...