INTRODUCTION: THE CONFLUENCE CHRONICLES
Book One: The Stitched Soldier
PROLOGUE
The world ended on a Tuesday.
Not with explosions or declarations of war. Not with the slow decline everyone had theorized—resource depletion, climate collapse, nuclear winter. No. It ended with a *sound* that wasn't quite a sound. A tearing. A ripping open of the very sky itself, as if reality had finally given up pretending it was solid and simply unzipped.
Some people saw it coming. Deep in classified research facilities buried under Antarctic ice, in government bunkers hidden beneath mountains, in the whispered conversations of terrified scientists who knew more than they were allowed to speak—there were people who had been waiting for this. They called it "the Event." They had contingency plans. They had weapons. They had locations marked on maps and protocols written in triplicate.
None of it mattered.
The ruptures opened over five cities simultaneously—New York, London, Tokyo, Lagos, São Paulo. Within fifteen minutes of the first breach, billions were dead. Within an hour, civilization was ending. Within a day, the old world was gone, and something new and terrible had taken its place.
They call it the Confluence now. The merger of worlds. The collision of reality and whatever nightmare dimension had been waiting on the other side of existence's thin wall.
And in the year and a half since everything fell apart, Marcus Hayes has been floating in the spaces between. Neither alive nor dead. Neither fully here nor entirely absent. Watching the world burn from outside of time itself, held suspended in the void by something ancient and hungry and absolutely certain that he had a role yet to play.
He's about to find out what that role is.
And he's going to hate it.
ABOUT THIS STORY
**The Confluence Chronicles** is a tale for those who appreciate dark complexity, moral ambiguity, and the understanding that sometimes the hero is as much a threat as any villain. It's Game of Thrones meets apocalyptic fantasy—a world where survival demands monstrosity, where love exists alongside betrayal, and where the gods themselves have agendas that have nothing to do with humanity's survival.
This is not a story about good triumphing over evil. Evil rarely works that cleanly. This is a story about broken people trying to survive in a broken world, where every choice carries impossible costs, where the innocent die meaninglessly, and where protection itself becomes a weapon.
Content Warning: This story contains mature themes including graphic violence, psychological trauma, warfare, death of children, moral compromise, and sexual content (presented through implication rather than explicit description). It is intended for adult readers comfortable with dark, complex narratives that don't shy away from human suffering or moral compromise.
THE WORLD YOU'RE ENTERING
In 2024, reality fractured. Two worlds collided—Earth and something else, something older and stranger. The barrier between them, which had been sealed for reasons no one fully understands, simply gave way. Whether through deliberate action, natural decay, or cosmic inevitability remains unclear.
What is clear: billions died. Civilization collapsed. The survivors were left with a new world called the Confluence—a landscape where magic is real, physics operates inconsistently, and creatures that shouldn't exist hunt through territories that violate every law of nature humans thought they understood.
Survival has meant adaptation. Humans learned to work with elves who've lived in the Confluence for millennia. Dwarves emerged from mountain strongholds to trade with refugee communities. Other races—drakonir, faekin, orckin, and stranger things still—began cautious interaction with these newcomers to their world.
But survival has also meant compromise. Compromise has meant becoming something less than human. And for some, like Marcus Hayes, compromise has meant becoming something far more dangerous than either human or monster.
THE CHARACTERS YOU'LL MEET
Marcus Hayes is a suicidal soldier who never got the chance to die. He was resurrected by forces he doesn't understand for purposes he can't fully articulate. He's gaining impossible power, but that power comes with a price that gets steeper with every use. He's trying to remain human in a world that demands monstrosity, trying to protect innocence in a place where innocence is simply prey waiting for predators.
Lysera Thorne is an ancient elf warrior who has survived eons of change. She knows what it means to accept darkness. She sees in Marcus something kindred—a person touched by power they never wanted. She becomes his anchor, his teacher, and possibly the only person who can keep him from losing himself entirely to what he's becoming.
Jessica Hayes is Marcus's wife. She was beautiful once. She was kind once. Then survival taught her that kindness is a luxury and beauty is a weapon. She has become ruthless in ways that scare most people, and she's working alongside the forces gathering to destroy everything Marcus is trying to protect.
Haven is the last sanctuary—a fortress built by refugees trying to preserve humanity in a world where humanity is increasingly anachronistic. It's fragile, political, and home to people from dozens of species learning to live together despite ancient prejudices and the constant pressure of predators outside their walls.
And there are others. A priest struggling with faith in a world where the gods seem to be playing chess with human lives as pieces. An ancient shaman who understands the cosmic forces at work. An engineer brilliant enough to merge magic and technology. Creatures that defy description. Warlords seeking to impose order through force. And at the edges, waiting and watching, forces so ancient and powerful that human consciousness can barely perceive them.
THE STORY AHEAD
This is the story of how Marcus Hayes becomes a weapon, and whether a weapon can learn to be human again. It's the story of Haven trying to survive in a world designed to destroy it. It's the story of a global war that becomes something far larger—a conflict at the cosmic scale where the nature of reality itself becomes negotiable.
It spans three books, 200+ chapters, and approximately 700,000 words of dark, brutal, psychologically intense high fantasy. There are moments of hope and connection. There are acts of genuine heroism. But there are also betrayals, deaths that serve no purpose, moral compromises that haunt, and questions that never quite get answered.
This is not escapism. This is a mirror held up to human nature under the most extreme circumstances imaginable. It asks what you would become to survive. What you would sacrifice. How much of yourself you'd destroy to protect those you love.
And most importantly: whether there's any redemption possible for someone who has become a monster—even if they became that monster trying to save others.
THEMES YOU'LL ENCOUNTER
- **Survival Requires Monstrosity**: What do you become when you must become a monster to survive?
- **Power Corrupts Absolutely**: Even power gained for good reasons corrupts the user inevitably.
- Betrayal Is Foundation: Everyone lies, everyone manipulates, everyone betrays when survival demands it.
- Justice Is Luxury: Consequences rarely match crimes; sometimes perpetrators escape; sometimes innocents are punished; sometimes no justice occurs.
- Redemption Is Fragile: Characters may achieve moments of redemption but never fully escape their past.
- Reality Is Negotiable: At cosmic scales, human concepts of good and evil become meaningless.
CONTENT WARNINGS
This trilogy contains:
- Violence: Graphic descriptions of combat, creature attacks, warfare, and death. Violence serves the story but is not glossed over.
- Death of Children: Not all children survive. Lily's fate is deliberately tragic and meaningless—not redemptive, not heroic.
- Psychological Trauma: PTSD, suicidality, moral injury, and psychological damage are portrayed realistically with lasting consequences.
- **War & Warfare**: Large-scale combat including war crimes, atrocities, friendly fire casualties, and the grinding horror of siege warfare.
- Moral Compromise: Characters make ethically questionable choices to survive. No character is entirely right; none entirely wrong.
- Sexual Content: Referenced and implied but never explicitly described. Intimacy is presented through emotional connection rather than physical detail.
- Body Horror: Transformation, augmentation, and magical effects result in body-level horror that is unsettling but not gratuitous.
- Existential Horror: Encounters with cosmic forces, interdimensional entities, and the realization that human concepts don't apply at cosmic scales.
WHAT THIS STORY IS NOT
This is not:
- A coming-of-age story (Marcus is already damaged before the story begins)
- A romance (relationships exist but are complicated, tested, and sometimes break)
- A hero's journey (Marcus becomes powerful but increasingly inhuman)
- A story about good defeating evil (reality is far more complex)
- Escapism (it's designed to disturb, challenge, and haunt)
- Predictable (major characters die unexpectedly; villains sometimes win; victories are pyrrhic)
WHAT THIS STORY IS
This is:
- A dark fantasy exploring human nature under extreme circumstances
- A meditation on power, corruption, and the cost of protection
- A political thriller where alliances matter as much as armies
- A cosmic horror story where humans are minor pieces in vast games
- A character study of trauma, adaptation, and the struggle for redemption
- A story that respects readers' intelligence and doesn't provide easy answers
- A tragedy with moments of genuine beauty and connection
- A trilogy designed to linger with you long after you finish
A FINAL WORD BEFORE YOU BEGIN
The Confluence is brutal. It offers no mercy. It punishes hesitation and rewarding ruthlessness. It is also beautiful. It is also human. Because despite everything—despite the cosmic forces at play, despite the monsters and the magic, despite the apocalypse itself—people continue to love, to sacrifice, to hope, and to try to build something better from the ashes.
This trilogy is about those people. About what they become. About whether they can remain human while doing inhuman things.
We invite you into their world. We warn you: it will change you.
Welcome to the Confluence.