The Hollow Crown

The story so far

The Brace That Held (chapters 1-8)

In Ash, a mining town in the Ashen Marches, a ranked worker's seal lights amber on the ration board. Kael Veyran's lights nothing. He is nineteen and unranked, and his sister Mira has the illness that killed their mother, with no healer who will see her. The only appointment within reach is the prize for winning the Ring, a tournament open to anyone who can pay the bond. Then, deep in the Company mine, Kael finds a scraped survey plate and a beam that ticks, and no one will stop the scheduled extraction pulse. When the roof comes down, he walks back into the dust for three trapped miners and grabs a failing ward brace with his bare hands. It holds. It also takes his memory of his mother's song. At the hearing afterward, the Company hands him the bill.

Seed Sixteen (chapters 9-14)

Orin Thale, a ward-mender at a forge everyone thinks went cold, saw what Kael's hands did to that brace, and he has a name for it: Hollowing, the outlawed art of drawing the charge out of broken wards. Small draws cost a morning. Big ones take a memory for good. Kael needs the strength, because Mira's medicine has been quietly moved to the tournament's infirmary, and in thirty days it lapses. So he pays his bond and enters the Ring as seed sixteen, the unranked miner nobody expects to last a bout, drawn against seed one on the very day the medicine runs out. The Ring's sponsor, Lord Brannoch Rhyd, smiles and hopes nothing keeps Kael from a certified result. And Seren Valcrest, a probationary auditor from the capital, starts counting what the Marches would rather leave uncounted.

The First Bout (chapters 15-24)

Seed sixteen faces seed one on the day Mira's medicine lapses. Kael has studied his opponent's feet. Hollowing lends him strength and takes something every time he reaches too far, and Mira has made him promise to ask before he spends anything that is hers.

Counting the Uncounted (chapters 25-34)

Seren Valcrest's books do not add up: too many injured miners, too many sealed carts, too many broken lattices sold to the wrong buyers. Kael carries a secret the Board hangs people for. Sooner or later, an honest auditor and an outlawed miner will be counting the same thing.

The Price of a Title (chapters 35-50)

House Voss, whose champion is seeded second, says the title goes to a house, never to an empty seal. Lord Rhyd keeps smiling. The longer an empty seal survives, the more the Ring's sponsors stand to lose, and the louder the people of Ash ask who gets counted.

Under the Oldest Street (chapters 51-66)

Every lamp in Ash can ring a warning, and every warning has been ignored before. Kael has already given up memories he will never get back. Book One ends with what lies buried beneath the town, and with how much more Kael will lose to stop it.

Chapters 21+ unlock with coins or Unlimited.