Book 4 · The Cairnstone Duology, Book Two · The Prophecy of Ruin Saga
The Cairnmaker
A Mythic Fantasy of the Four Blades
FOUR BLADES. FOUR MERCIES. EVERY GIFT BREAKS WHAT IT SAVES.
Years have passed since the sky tore. The valley has roads now, and markets, and a man who does not age, quietly stacking stones over everything the world insists on forgetting. When a lie nearly costs the settlement everything, Kael forges an answer out of fallen star-iron: Kaien, a blade that screams at falsehood. Truth without kindness. Then grief demands its own blade, and Reth is born, which takes the pain out of remembering, and then the remembering. Then Verrin, which binds what is breaking. Then Tessil, the smallest blade, which is mercy. Four blades, each forged to end a sorrow. Each one works. That is the problem. Because every principle, held pure, becomes a weapon, and something older than the valley has been waiting for humanity to learn exactly that. The stones remember what people cannot bear to. Someone has to carry them.
626 pages · Perch Press
Book 4 of The Prophecy of Ruin Saga, completing the Cairnstone Duology. The story concludes in The Last Cairn.
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M. A. Khan writes at the meeting point of ancient warning and modern consequence. A British author with a previous career at the sharp end of military and trauma medicine, he brings a surgeon's economy and a soldier's eye to stories that range from apocalyptic geopolitical thrillers to mythic dark fantasy. His books ask one recurring question: when the old stories said we were warned, what exactly were we supposed to do about it? He writes as M. A. Khan; his nonfiction appears under Mansoor Ali Khan. Published by Perch Press.