The Sojourn of the Lector of Memory

On TERRA, Coltrane Mercer is seduced into a rebellion against the corporation he works for, which is forcing humanity toward Mars. His lover needs his access to its infrastructure; Colt hopes that helping her win will give them a chance to build a life together. But as the fighting closes around them, he must choose between escape with his family and staying behind on Terra with the woman he cannot bear to leave. The promise they make to each other will reach beyond their world—and draw the Lector of Memory into his life.

On REDATHIS, Colt finds himself bound to Cleo, the Lector of Memory, who can take control of his body. Driven by revenge for the death of her previous Scribe, she forces him to learn the magic he will need to survive the Hollowing. As their friend Mary helps prepare him for the dangers ahead, she falls in love with them both—but Colt hates the woman whose quest now governs his life.

The Hollowing brings ruin to the civilization born from Tarem's victory three thousand years ago. Nearly forgotten in a world that has never known war, Akrinor takes control of a Void of Memory and unleashes an apocalypse to make humanity worship Death again. Oswikar Haldenrath’s magical inventions turn warfare into devastation, and his assault on the gods leaves Ephrela and Zoethra for dead. Enraged, Akrinor gains a renewed worshipper in Tarem—the immortal priest-king who once championed Ephrela—further feeding the catastrophe.

Leaving Mary behind to enter this dying world, Colt finds Tarem and Akrinor protecting the Void he must destroy. The devastation recalls the conflict he left behind on TERRA, but this time he has the power to win. What began as Cleo’s forced pursuit of revenge becomes a fight he chooses for himself.

Colt joins Fenrik Lanzehn’s party of heroes in seeking the aid of each of the Athemic Scribes. The struggle pits Fenrik against Tarem and leads Orencio Salazar to a dark bargain with the surviving Ephrela and Zoethra, through which he kills Akrinor and claims Death’s power. Alongside them stand Azahara Salazar, the most fearsome mage the world has ever known, and Oswikar himself: the man whose inventions ended civilization, now fighting for what remains. During their quest, Colt falls in love with Cleo, the woman who forced him into this world.

After defeating Tarem, Fenrik becomes the Scribe of Coherence. His Lector, Atlas, wants to discover whether their bond can be broken—and tests the possibility by separating Colt from Cleo. The separation leaves Cleo without her memories of the man she has come to love.

In Bruchwald’s isolated mountain camps, officer cadets Evelyn and Liesl struggle through training that tests their ambitions, loyalties, and capacity to care for one another. Among their instructors is Mary, whose help offers some relief from the demands of military life. Their lives collide with Colt’s when, immediately after his separation from Cleo, Ephrela and Zoethra kidnap them for a ritual to pull him from Atlas’s grasp. Evelyn will serve as his anchor—and Liesl must share a burden she cannot survive alone.

A lead on a cure for his fading memory brings Colt to Cleo, an enslaved woman who has recently become a princess-to-be. She is the woman he loves, but she no longer remembers him—and holds the key to the future he and Mary hoped they could share with her. Together, the three must contend with Tarem’s ghost as they pursue a cure for the erasure threatening that future. Yet restoring what they have lost will not be enough: to build a life together, they must learn that love does not become more real by proving it greater than someone else’s.

Akrinor’s influence grows again through the power preserved in Orencio’s bloodline, now carried by Marcellin Valencourt, the enslaved saint of a necromantic Order. Seeking her missing sister and a way to stop a second apocalypse, Cordette Morivaux turns to that same Order—only to be condemned as the next Dark Lord. Marcellin offers intimate exorcisms instead of execution, but their growing love draws her toward everything her faith forbids. To free him, Cordette must fulfill the prophecy and become Cleo’s successor as Lector of Memory, claiming the man she loves as her Scribe. Ending Death’s inherited hold on the world will test whether she can relinquish the very thing she fights to preserve: every memory of their love.