Desolate by Jonathan Shuerger

SFINCS

From mother and refugee, to warrior and nun, to traitress and Destroyer. Hell hath no fury like a mother betrayed.The Signovencian Church paints Sevara of the Blooded as a Hellwitch responsible for the burning of dozens of churches across Samothrace. Congregations whisper hushed prayers that her demonic gaze might pass over and spare them the ravages of her malicious coven, the Blooded of Ruin. She was not always so. According to the forbidden writings of Father Joseph, excommunicate shepherd of the Blooded, a tribeswoman of the Hellscape fled her master to save her infant son from ritualistic sacrifice. She finds sanctuary on the other side of Bel Farak in a small parish and hides there. Now, to prove she is no spy of Hell, Sevara volunteers to enter the war on the side of the Kingdom as a warrior nun of the Anointed. While fighting to survive the monsters, demons and savages from the life she abandoned, she has no idea of the political wheels turning behind the scenes, and the danger that her supposed allies present to her and her son. Desolate is the tragic origin story of the Destroyer’s champion, Sevara of the Blooded, and a prequel to Shades of Black Afterlight.

In Darkness Cast: A Tale of Swords and Sorcery (Shades of Black Book 1) by Jonathan Shuerger

When Hell’s legions invade his homeland, a desperate warrior turns to the only mentor he can find – a bitter champion of the Everlasting Dark. Gideon Halcyon wants nothing more than to save his people from the forces of Hell. Demons and cultists run roughshod over his home, slaughtering and sacrificing to a trifecta of fallen angels on the cusp of destroying the kingdoms of Man. Hope seems infantile in the face of extinction itself... ...until Gideon meets Ashkelon. Coming from the Void beyond the world, Ashkelon alone survives the world he left in ruins. Cynical and ruthless, the dark sorcerer seethes with millennia of hatred, and his cursed sword Acherlith shrieks with the last screams of a thousand failed heroes. Ashkelon makes Gideon an offer – to train him to be a hero of the Light beyond the failures sealed within his blade, a peerless warrior exceeding even the exacting standards of the Everlasting Dark. Reluctantly, Gideon accepts, and is thrust into a world of infinite cruelty under Ashkelon’s black fist where the slightest misstep will see him dead at the sorcerer’s hand.