Blood of the Old Kings begins an epic adventure in which three strangers journey through a vast Empire that uses the power of dead wizards to conquer and subdue, from award-winning author Sung-il Kim and translated by the highly-acclaimed Anton Hur.
Intrigued? Well read on to discover the synopsis and an excerpt from Blood of the Old Kings by Sung-il Kim and translated by Anton Hur, which is out October 8th 2024.
Powered by the corpses of sorcerers, the Empire has conquered the world. It claims to have brought peace and stability to its conquered lands, but some see that peace for what it is—a lie—and will give everything in the fight against it.
Loran is desperate for revenge after the Empire killed her family, so much so that the swordswoman climbs the volcano where the legends say an ancient dragon slumbers and leaps in. She finds that the legends are true, and Loran leaves the mountain with a sword made of dragon’s fang and a great purpose before her.
Cain arrived in the Imperial Capital lost and orphaned, and it’s only thanks to the kindness of a stranger-turned-mentor that he survived on the city’s streets. When his friend is found murdered, he will leave no stone unturned to find those responsible, even if it means starting a war.
Arienne’s future has never been in question—born a sorcerer, she’ll be a Power Generator for the Empire upon her death. But when she starts to hear the voice of a powerful necromancer in her head, she realizes the only thing more terrifying than dying for the Empire is never getting to truly live in the first place.
When peace is a lie, there is power in truth—and as Loran, Cain, and Arienne hunt for answers in their own lives, any one of their small rebellions could be the stone that brings the Empire toppling down.
3
ARIENNE
To be a first-year student studying at the Division of Sorcery in the Imperial Academy was to live in fear. The Academy had so many rules it was impossible to remember them all, and you could be punished for any infraction, real or imagined. And not only by the housemaster; the upperclassmen acted as enforcers too. A majority of your first year was spent cowering, terrified of leaving your dorm room except for classes and meals.
But eventually, as you numbed to the terrifying reality of your everyday, it would slowly become clear that this was all bluster. The Academy’s harsh reputation was just that: reputation. By the start of your second year, you would realize that you could stay out all day and night, you could partake of anything and everything the Capital had to offer; as long as you were back by morning, there would be no consequences. In everyday life, it would be not so different from the mundane divisions of the Academy where non- sorcerers studied.
Still, the inkling of fear you felt at the start would never quite leave you; it helped you remember that being here was not a choice, and that there were some rules that must not be broken no matter what year you were, or even if you were a professor: You must not try to escape. You must not enter the underground chamber where the Power generator resided.
In her sixth year at the Division of Sorcery at the Eleventh College of the Imperial Academy, Arienne found herself about to break both rules at the same time.
Late in the afternoon, Arienne put her boyfriend, Felix, under a sleeping spell in his room. Making sure nobody was in the hallway, she slipped out of the dormitory through a back window, unno- ticed. As far as anyone knew, she was still in that room with him. Arienne felt a slight pang of guilt—confusion and chaos awaited him when he woke up. Maybe he would even be dragged away to the Office of Truth. If she hadn’t already been dragged there before him.
The sleeping spell wasn’t anything her professors had taught her. The Academy never taught them spells—such were un-Imperial relics of the past. She had learned it from Kaya, a Bachrian girl one year senior who liked to show off the beautifully crafted scars on her shoulders. Kaya had told everyone that she had learned a smat- tering of hedge magic from an old grimoire she discovered in the library and subsequently lost, but she later confessed to Arienne that her teacher had been a rogue witch hiding from the Empire, back in her southern home province.
Unlike Kaya, Arienne had not known any spells at all when she took the mandatory admission test at the age of ten. Among the half dozen Arlander children suspected of magic, only she was ordered to the Imperial Capital that year. It was the duty of all sorcerers to enroll in the Imperial Academy. In the fringes of the Empire, where the Office of Truth was unable to administer regu- lar testing, undetected magical children grew up to be feral sorcer- ers, or so the rumors said. But since Arland was a small province firmly under Imperial rule, she had always known such a life would never be hers, ever since the moment she felt the first violet thrum of magic in her. But still.
Her parents were compensated generously for handing Ari- enne over without complaint. The villagers put on a grand party for her, as if she were going to the Capital to get a fancy job. There was a cake shaped like an old woman sorcerer wearing a conical hat and a long robe with star patterns, striking a dramatic pose. The baker was repeatedly stroking his bald head, looking pleased with his work. After that day, Arienne never spoke to her parents again. She had already known what kind of life was waiting at the Imperial Academy, and hated her sorcerer’s fate for it. If she had ever tried to escape, she would have been hunted down and killed. Even that would have been no escape from what the Empire had planned for her, for all sorcerers. But things had changed recently.
She now had a chance at a different fate, something undreamed of till now.
