Tidestep

Fifteen thousand years of failed endings. One woman’s journal knows them all. Its entries span ages. Its corrections are struck through, not erased. All that time, she’s been watching. She’s seen this story play out before. She may even know how it's supposed to end.

Eighteen-year-old Zaphiel knows nothing of the journal. He's been sent to deliver a sealed scroll to Wellvale’s Water Master. Instead, he finds the man dead, the ancient well stone stolen, and a red-black fog killing crops and people. Returning home means admitting failure. So he recklessly chooses to chase the thieves and recover the stone.

When the fog nearly kills him too, a dog arrives to lead him out alive. No ordinary dog, she pursues the thieves and Zaphiel follows. Along the way they gather strays, including a guarded young woman who reads ancient runes and shares less than she knows, a “master swordsman” with a hat that betrays his every bluff, and a mute teenage girl whose trances reach beyond the mortal world. Chance throws them together. They choose to stay.

Because the stone is Tidestep, one of five Anchor Stones that hold the world of Arthios in balance. Someone wanted it badly enough to poison a village. And the journal's writer has spent ages planning for what comes next.

Tidestep is book 1 of The Saga of Arthios, an epic fantasy for readers who love found families, animal companions with secrets, dual narratives, and stories that reward close attention.