Lucian of the Ashes [Grimdark Progression Fantasy | Visceral Combat | Dead Men Teach]

To learn a dead man's swordwork, Lucian has to let the dead man kill him. Every weapon with a history keeps its owner inside it. Touch the blade and he falls into their memory, and the memory fights back. Throat opened. Heart run through. He dies in there, again and again, until he can pin the phantom down and tear the technique out of it. Nobody handed him this. There is no system, no bloodline, no voice from the heavens keeping score. There is one rusted kris, a house of highborn sons who want the orphan gone, and something asleep underneath him that only wakes when he is about to die. All he ever wanted was for them to use his name. By the time he learns what the weapons have been teaching him, he is standing in front of things that were old before the gods went to war, and he has stopped being the kind of boy anyone would want to save. What to expect: • It starts in a training yard. It does not stay there.• Grimdark progression. Every technique is taken from a dead master, and every fight is paid for in blood, bone and years, on the page.• Lucian is the spine of the book. The trainees who survive beside him get arcs of their own, and pay their own bills.• Ancient dragons, demon generals, and a war in heaven that already ended badly. New chapter every day.