The Empty Vessel

Ancient sorcerers grew immortal orchards from Vaidolin's enchanted blackrock. Now their sacred trees bleed black beneath rotting leaves.

In this crater-city where old sorcery seeps away like water through cracked stone, three lives intertwine in a dance of power and regret.

Taul, a consort with the rare gift to imbue trees with sorcery, watches his neglected talents wither as he stalks Vaidolin's criminal shadows seeking an heiress to save his house. Ren, a nameless orphan whose bloody rise through Vaidolin's underworld has earned him everything but the belonging he craves, sees one last chance to rewrite his legacy-if betraying everything he knows doesn't destroy him first. And Gishna, the ancient matron of Ilor'Hosmyr, chases desperate solutions while turning her back on the very source of her house's power, blind to how her own choices feed the rot within.

As millennium-old orchards wither and proud houses crumble, these three pawns become players in a game where tradition fails and corruption blooms in its place. But in Vaidolin, where even the most ancient magics turn to poison, the price of denying one's nature may be steeper than facing it.

A tale of inheritance and consequence, The Empty Vessel draws readers back into a world where the choices we refuse to make poison the ground beneath our feet, and those who abandon their roots risk being strangled by what grows in their place.

For fans of character-focused high fantasy, political drama, and epic scope. The Empty Vessel is the second book in the Fifth Accord series. Each book focuses on one of the five Mornae high houses and builds to an inevitable conclusion... civil war.