THE TEMPORAL HEART ↳ A WIP INTRO BY @SEASTEADING
It was ironic, truly; as a child they’d likened him to a prodigy, a chance at redemption for generations of disgrace (not his brother, never his brother), for elopements and fraud and the sins of a long-dead bloodline.
The blood of tyrants ran through his veins, after all. Ansgar von Hauenstein’s head was hung from the walls of his own palace, the blade through his chest his own daughter’s for a reason.
Now, his magic promised to be the death of him.
GENRE: YA Gaslamp Fantasy, Adventure
POV: Multi (third-person limited)
STATUS: First Draft (45k/100k)
THEMES/TROPES: Found family; betrayal and redemption; sibling resentment; blood runs thicker than water but both will drown you all the same; mercurial gods; the consequences of immortality; magic as an inherently malevolent force; eldritch fae
Ezra von Hauenstein is dying. A curse makes poison of his very blood, his magic promising to burn him from the inside out—at least, if his single-minded ambition doesn’t kill him first.
(Ichor to match that of the gods runs through your veins, but what will you do when the pyrite shows through?)
After years of fruitless searching, a girl escaped from the Rift with blood as gold as his own offers the chance for a cure. When her promises of a lost city within the Rift catch the attention of a member of the Explorer’s Guild fighting for recognition, Ezra volunteers as a medic on an expedition to find it, deep within the massive abyss between continents, rumored to hold the treasures of gods.
Soon, however, a god’s death reveals its consequences as the crew is left to navigate a land surreal and treacherous, all the while trying to avoid becoming puppets in a millennia-old quest for vengeance. Their guide finds herself their undoing as the truth she was running from becomes her hunter, and a once-loyal guard finds a taste for betrayal in a game of lives not his to take. Ezra himself races to find the artifact that might save him from his own magic, but the almost sentient Rift holds its own grim secrets, and from a gilded cage, a queen mad with revenge and an insatiable thirst for power sees opportunity.
Ezra von Hauenstein | the heir to a disgraced noble family, more vicious than charming even when he tries. Aloof and ambitious, and a good enough liar to hide the fact that he’s falling apart.
Florizel von Hauenstein | the twin, the spare. Mild-mannered yet the opposite of dutiful, forever living in the shadow of someone he isn’t sure he can still call a brother.
Irena | the guide to the crew, quiet and clever and far more like her mother than she would ever admit. Of a bloodline incapable of lying, but lying a puppeteer does not make.
Ruvaen | the guard torn between his duty and his fragile humanity, treason on his lips despite a firm moral compass. Ready to give away his heart, but it is taking it back that will cause it to break.
Gideon Leclaire | the leader of the expedition, obscenely wealthy yet still longing for the acknowledgment of those who care nothing for him. In the end, wild geese make for the worst of prey.
Rhieka Alva | the engineer immune to magic, valued as a curiosity, a hunter—as anything but a person. A fuse as short as her stature, the thing she hates most of all is a liar.
LINKS: wip page | main tag | excerpts
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