In the explosive finale to the instant New York Times bestseller Breath of the Dragon, a young warrior fights to reunite his family and the realm.
Intrigued? Read on to discover the synopsis and an excerpt from Mark of the Warrior by Shannon Lee and Fonda Lee, which releases on October 27th 2026.
Two brothers. Two nations. One destiny.
Exiled as a traitor after the Guardian’s Tournament, Li Jun has vowed to retrieve the stolen Scroll of Heaven and to honor his father’s dying request: find his mother and twin brother, Sai.
Fleeing into the East in search of their friend Ren, Jun and his longtime rival Yin Yue have no choice but to trust the two breathmarked women who saved their lives but who answer to the mysterious and draconian Council of Virtue that tore Jun’s family apart and banished him and his father a decade ago.
Recovering the Scrolls of Heaven or Earth in order to stop the brewing war that threatens to devastate East and West alike isn’t Jun’s only seemingly insurmountable challenge. The twin he was separated from in childhood is now the High Keeper who resides in the Sun Pagoda, protecting the precious Scroll of Earth from all potential enemies…including Jun.
The fate of the entire land hinges on an inevitable reckoning between brothers that will test their skills, their loyalties, and everything they thought they knew about themselves and the nature of destiny.
EXCERPT
From Mark of the Warrior by Shannon Lee and Fonda Lee. Copyright © 2026 by the authors, and reprinted with permission of St. Martin’s Publishing Group.
ONE
The East was a place of falling leaves and memories.
The bite of autumn was in the air, the first threat of frost stirring the wind that tugged the red and orange leaves from their branches. It reminded Jun of a similar fall morning when he was six years old, when he’d been abruptly thrust into exile, his life torn asunder.
And here he was again.
“We’ll stop and rest here,” Water suggested, leading them away from the road into a nearby clearing. It was only midafternoon and they hadn’t gone more than a couple dozen li, but no one put up an argument. The grueling pace and injuries Jun and Yin Yue had sustained during their flight to reach the Snake Wall had taken a toll, and they needed time to recover. A week ago, Water and Lure had led them through a secret crossing in the Snake Wall under the cover of a cloudy, moonless night, passing shadowy patrolmen bribed to look the other way and keep their mouths shut. Since then, they’d been traveling slowly, taking the much- needed time to regain their strength and prepare themselves for whatever lay ahead.
Jun dropped onto a nearby fallen log and carefully eased off the sling that had been holding his injured left shoulder immobile. Gingerly, he rolled it out, feeling the joint protest with stiffness but no longer with pain. The puncture wound from Old Man Zhang’s spike- tipped cane had sealed up, leaving an unsightly scar but no lingering damage. Lure came over and had Jun lift his arm over his head and move it around as she examined it. “You’re a quick fix,” she observed, impressed.
“Thanks to you,” Jun said, stretching his shoulder across his body, trying to gently bring mobility back into his disused muscles. He was lucky to have made it through the Guardian’s tournament and the encounter against the Moon Righteous Sabers with his life, and without suffering far worse damage. With proper care, he’d always been able to heal quickly and bounce back from injury. Back in his Iron Core school training days, he’d noticed that some of his classmates would be aching for a week after heavy sparring and conditioning.
“Ah, to have the metabolism of a young man,” Water said with a smile, coming up next to her apprentice. “And you’re more fortunate than most, to have such an abundance of Dragon’s Breath. Chang said it was the most he’d ever seen in anyone who isn’t breathmarked.”
Sifu Chang. Worry twisted Jun’s stomach into knots. He could only hope the blind flutist and his daughter, Ren, were safe. They had escaped Cobu’s soldiers and fled into the East; Jun knew that much from Lure’s uncanny ability to lead them steadily and unerringly toward the owner of the silk scarf tied around her belt. Wherever Ren went, Lure could find her. But Jun had no way of knowing if Chang and Ren were sick or injured, if they’d found sanctuary somewhere, or if they were in as much danger on this side of the Snake Wall as they had been on the other.
If only Ren had shared her plans with him earlier, given him more than a cryptic clue to go on. He’d spent so much time with her yet had never really been brought into her confidence. To Chang and Ren and the rest of the Silent Flute Society, he’d been a convenient wrench in General Cobu’s otherwise uncontested plans to subvert the Guardian’s Tournament and seize complete power in the West. And even on that front, he’d failed. He’d been Guardian for less than a day, and now Cobu was on the march. War hung in the air as surely as the coming winter.
Not for the first time, Jun wished he’d never left Cheon. He wouldn’t have any more power to stop Cobu than he did now, but at least he’d be at home, training by day and working at the opera house by night, sitting down with his father for a late supper after the performances were over. The two of them would talk about the fighters in the Guardian’s Tournament without Jun ever having to set foot in the arena himself. And his father would be alive. Sad and resigned, perhaps, but still alive, instead of in the ground, buried by strangers, without even his disobedient son to pour libations on his grave. How deeply Jun wished he’d been more grateful for an uneventful day.
Jun got to his feet. Fighting for his life had at least kept him from thinking too much. Now that he wasn’t in immediate danger, he had far too much time on his hands to sink into worry and regret. Crossing the clearing, he went over to where Yin Yue was sitting on the ground, leaning his back against a tree, struggling to adjust the canvas straps around the stump where his right hand used to be.
“Need a hand?” Jun jested, hoping to make the older student smile. Instead, Yin Yue made a noise of frustration and dropped his false appendage to the ground. The pitchfork that Yin had lashed to his maimed limb in order to fight the Sabers was hardly practical for daily tasks, so one night Lure had whittled a piece of firewood into a fake hand for him. It only had two big fingers and a curved thumb, so it looked more like a crab claw than a hand, but at least it was semi- functional and not as heavy. The problem was keeping it stabilized on Yin’s arm without it coming loose while keeping the straps, which Lure had fashioned by tearing a grain sack into strips, from chafing against Yin’s still- healing limb.
“This is pointless,” Yin Yue exclaimed, and dropped his forehead onto his bent knees.
“I don’t know about you,” Jun said, “but I’m starting to get antsy. Feeling up for some light sparring?”
Training was where Jun could feel in control and centered. He could silence the doubts in his mind with physical exertion, find some measure of peace in the practice of violence. Recovery was all well and needed, but just because they were in the East didn’t mean they were out of danger. Far from it. He wouldn’t put it past General Cobu to send more bounty hunters like Old Man Zhang after him.
