Bonds of Promise by Andrew D. Meredith

All are bound by oaths of pantheon —mortals, saints, and deity. For it is by those promises made, The world of Kallattai is chained and set free. Hanen and Rallia Clouw—enterprising mercenaries, caring siblings, and children of a luckless man—only wish to find their place in the world and make an easy coin. Yet too many blame their own bad luck on the Clouws, and everything they have worked for begins to crumble around them. When the man who introduced them to their path rolls into town with an easy opportunity to make them all wealthy and influential, they leap at the chance to hit the road, and put their past behind them once more. Fate has other plans. And the responsibilities they leave to others must be answered for. Bonds of Promise is Book One in the sprawling epic fantasy series the Kallattian Cycle by Andrew D Meredith—a story of gods, their chosen champions, and dark figures bent on freeing the mortal realms from a fate established by greater beings. All would-be heroes must give their lives, or be made folly. Example to those who’ve still to come, Through doomed cycle, Or fated legacy.

The Fractured Balance by N.A. Soleil

When emotionless, immortal genetic experiment Pheonix escapes the slavers’ arena and arrives in the utopian elven city of Terelath, he learns the metacosm is governed by an ideology known as ‘the balance,’ which claims the kind of evil Pheonix experienced while enslaved to be a tolerable part of the natural order. Unbeknownst to him, Pheonix is the long-awaited Ascended of Justice, and those drawn to Justice quickly gather around him. With their help, he hones his innate abilities and sets out to investigate the covert system supporting ‘the balance.’ As Pheonix begins to uncover that the metacosm’s governing bodies are chained to injustice at the core, he and his newfound allies vow to excise the corruption … even if it means all-out war.