The Omens of War: A Literary Speculative Fantasy
Records of the Orders #1
A philosophical fantasy of Thucydidean politics, eldritch intellects, and psychological horror woven into fractured timelines.
The peace between Firard and Sestel teeters on the edge of collapse.
In the fortress of Egon Hold, strategist Dante Praeto becomes the unwilling host of the War Games: a simulated battle fundamental to rising in the ranks of Firard’s Legions. As the contestants march towards the ravine shared with their enemy nation, a landslide swallows the soldiers within.
Across that ravine, Lady Calya Seve guards the Sestelii frontier, aware the War Games will provoke a diplomatic upheaval. She deals in treaties and political alliances, but little does she know the next threat isn’t coming through the border.
Unbeknownst to them, both are pieces in a larger scheme: a game played by eldritch beings for whom entire nations are little more than tools, and humans mere pawns. For in the end, the alchemists of The Orders will unleash chaos in their eternal pursuit of arcane knowledge.
The omens of war will be heard by all.
Psychologically intense, and written for readers who read to solve.
Author’s Intent
This story began as an attempt to explore how people break—and rebuild—in the presence of power they cannot comprehend. I wanted to write about fear, honor, and self-interest in the Thucydidean sense, about how political structures shape memory, and about the quiet horrors we carry inside our own minds.
The eldritch beings in this world are not cosmic monsters but posthuman intellectual forces: scholars, experimenters, and idea-harvesters who treat human minds the way we treat archives. Their ‘horror’ is psychological rather than monstrous—rooted in schema therapy, trauma imagery, and the unsettling excavation of identity.
This is not an epic quest, and neither a traditional hero’s journey… and albeit it contains cosmic beings, it is not Lovecraftian in tone.
Instead, this book is a literary and speculative fantasy—told through fractured timelines, political theory, and psychological disorientation. It is written for readers who read to solve; for those who prefer fiction that lingers, whispers, and asks more questions than it answers.
For those who dare.
