Kreig Stellar is the author of The Chronicles of Myrthara, a fantasy cycle written at the edge of the known world. There, where borders fade and ancient names return as whispers.
The animal carved a deep, sweeping furrow through the snow. Only the muted crunch of its footfalls broke the silence, softened beneath the heavy mantle. An immense bear, powerful in the heart of winter. Its massive head searched a horizon obscured by the dense ranks of trunks. Its eye sockets were deep, too deep. A faint glimmer shone within them.
Eyes.
Human ones.
They belonged to Kaèl, who watched the world through this peculiar headdress. He had torn it from the beast two seasons earlier. The wounds had closed, but his body remembered. The pelt had served. That was all that mattered.
Ahead, the trunks began to thin. The canopy opened abruptly, and the cold settled over his shoulders, sharper now, unfiltered. A fallen stump lay on its side, its roots thrust toward the sky, still pale, the fall was recent. Around it, the earth had been heaved up in thick, dark clods.
He lifted his gaze. The stars revealed themselves in the clearing; by instinct, he found them, checked his bearing, then lowered his eyes once more to the stump. The shoots were already there. Clustered along the dead trunk, each following the last, they had found the tender wood and were working it, fiber by fiber.
For three days, he had not lost sight of the stars. As the constellations faded into dawn, slowly swallowed by the growing blue of the sky, he saw that he had scarcely strayed. He sat on the bark, which yielded slightly beneath his weight, soft, almost spongy. His shoulders slackened. The weight of the hide made itself known all at once, as though his body had only just taken notice. He tested the cloak with his hand; the seams, hastily stitched beneath numbed fingers, pulled tight like poorly closed scars. But they had held. The stump sagged a little further.
He was used to hard wood, to dry bark made brittle, almost fossilized by the wind. This one was almost comfortable. Here, the trees rose straight toward the sky. He had long since passed the hunched silhouettes, bent beneath violent winds and stripped bare on their exposed sides. Here, the trees had only to concern themselves with growing. The wind did not carry the same ferocity.
It was a good sign. He was close.
New books, new maps, new atlas entries. Nothing else.
Two volumes planned — more, if Myrthara so wills.
« The fire of Athra runs in his veins, but it is the ice of exile that has forged his being.»
Born far from the hearth he was born to inherit, sixteen winters of survival have shaped Kaèl into a weapon ready to strike. His will is bent entirely on Morven, the usurper who sits upon the flame stolen from his line. The young man thought himself ready to face anything to fulfil his destiny; but in crossing the Veil of reality, he will discover secrets that will change him forever.
« To be free is to challenge the depths: the sea yields all its treasures, yet lingers for the slip that lets it claim you. »
When the flame left them, the rules changed. In this world where the deck has been reshuffled, the old paths are gone, and every means must be redefined. Refusing to be shackled by the remnants of a dying past, Veya stands tall, guided by her will alone. She prepares to sail toward unknown horizons, in search of a wild freedom that may well cost her everything she owns.
Allow me to present the fruit of my inquiries: scraps of knowledge gathered through my wanderings at the edges of Myrthara. I entrust you with this Atlas — a work I shall never cease to enrich, as my explorations carry on. May you become the witnesses of this journey, and savour, alongside me, the boundless richness of this world.
Your devoted chronicler, Kreig Stellar.
At the heart of the isle of Nymeth, within the realm of Vorælium, stands a tree few have seen and all have known. Born, it is said, from the first tear of Myrthara, its roots descend to the heart of the earth, and its highest branches once brushed the stars. Today its leaves are turning grey; its sap flows more slowly. Something, which the world has not yet named, is hollowing it from within. Around it, a mist never quite lifts.
Shaped in the bowels of the world, the Grundaraks carry their essence upon their very skin: dark granite veined with obsidian, shifting marble, volcanic stone that drinks the light. Older than the first kingdoms, they are the keepers of a memory that time cannot erase. The scars of ancient conflicts with the surface remain raw; meeting them by day has become a rarity, but of their existence there is no doubt.
The Tidara belongs to no master. It moves through the world and through beings like a breath the earth draws in and lets go at its own will. For the Eldaras, this gift is neither inheritance nor science, but a recognition granted by Myrthara herself. The Tidara is not transmitted; it is received, or forever unknown. As the Dendramyr empties of its substance, magic withdraws — leaving behind a wild, unpredictable, and lethal energy.
Heirs to the essence of Elysian, the Eldaras kept watch over the balance of the Tidara. Beneath their guard, Myrthara knew its apogee. Then arose Ardonis, born of Althäart, at the foot of the sacred plateau of the Altar — the most powerful of his line. But the ambition of Ardonis came to surpass his wisdom. By drawing Myrthara into wars of conquest, he fractured the balance he was meant to protect. His fall carried his people with him: the Eldaras dwindled, as a flame deprived of breath.
Before kingdoms were ever built, they already walked the earth. Beings of a forgotten enormity, the last remnants of an age when Myrthara and her children were one. Neither gods nor mere beasts: the living memory of a time when magic had not yet run dry. The stag whose antlers bear the weight of forest-centuries, the colossal shadow the fishermen fear to name… To meet their gaze, it is said, changes a man forever: he ceases to look upon the world, and feels it looking back.
Neither its beginning nor its end is known. From the dawn of time, it has set the wild life of Myrthara against the absolute silence of the Void. At the heart of this clash, Elysian shattered himself so that we might exist, leaving his essence suspended within the folds of the world. Most peoples believe they live in peace, unaware that the treaty was never signed. The war has not vanished; it has merely fallen into slumber. And somewhere, in the unseen, something has just awoken.
I have never cared for author's notes; they try to capture in a few lines what a lifetime of experiences could never quite set down on the page. And yet, to the attentive reader, I shall hide nothing: you will know me at the turn of a page, for the words one entrusts to a tale are a far truer testimony than any ceremonial biography.
Allow me, then, to reveal almost nothing here of the man, and to speak only of Myrthara.
Myrthara appears on no map, no atlas, no chronicle you might have leafed through before me. And yet I have walked this continent so long that, at times, I begin to doubt:
From these incursions I have, in the end, brought back stories. Athra is not the beginning of a tale; it is the threshold where I at last consented to let it be read. The Chronicles of Myrthara will be long, and shall hold as many volumes as it takes to explore their vastness — I do not yet know their number myself, so wide is the horizon. I know only that the volumes will come in the order I am able to hear them.
If this book finds its place on your shelf, it shall be at home there. As for the rest — my face, or my days — I leave you the care of drawing whatever portrait pleases you. Since you have travelled this far, I know I can trust you: you will draw a portrait I would be proud to explore.
Yours faithfully, dear reader.