Echo Of Ruin
They thought they had saved the world. They were wrong.
Six months after shattering the Silent Forge and defeating a god-like tyrant, the heroes of the first war are learning a bitter truth: you can’t kill an idea. The silence of their enemy is gone, but the world he broke remains shattered. The magical Blight he unleashed was not a spell to be undone, but a lingering radiation, a self-sustaining poison now seeping into the very soil and soul of the land. Empires have crumbled to dust, leaving behind a power vacuum into which new horrors are rushing.
This is not the dawn of a new age, but the echo of ruin—a slow, festering decay.
Their journey for answers leads them to Greyfell, the infamous City of Scars. This grim boomtown thrives on the edge of the abyss, a haven for smugglers, mercenaries, and desperate scholars drawn to the raw, chaotic energy of the Stress Fracture—a wound in reality itself. Here, a new enemy has taken root. They are the Gilded Hand, a terrifying cult of philosopher-assassins who see life’s chaos as a flaw to be corrected. Driven by a chilling logic, they seek to impose their own sterile, absolute order on the universe through a process they call “Rectification.” They are not monsters of passion, but of purpose, and their methods are as precise as they are horrifying.
Against this rising tide of fanatical order stands the most unlikely fellowship, a found family bound by desperation:
- A fallen angel, his divine light a beacon of defiance, now haunted by the memory of his celestial exile.
- A psychic healer, shielded by a lead-lined helmet, whose gift is a curse in a city screaming with psychic pain.
- A halfling rogue, a native of Greyfell’s gutters, forced to confront the ghosts of a past he can’t outrun.
- A stoic monk, whose faith in logic is shaken by an enemy that weaponizes it.
- A deadly assassin, a former enforcer whose cold professionalism is a shield for her own deep wounds.
- An illusionist con-man, whose talent for lies may be the only truth that can save them.
Bound by a desperate pact with the city’s dying criminal queen, they are given an impossible mission: venture into the chaotic, reality-bending hellscape of the Stress Fracture. Their goal is to sabotage the Gilded Hand and steal the legendary Alchemist’s Ledger, an artifact of immense power. This is no noble quest; it is a dirty job in a world of grey, a descent into a pocket dimension where the laws of nature are thin and the very air is hostile.
For fans of Brandon Sanderson’s complex characters and the grimdark worlds of Joe Abercrombie, Echo of Ruin is a gripping tale of survival horror and psychological dread that will leave you breathless.
- A World Scarred by Magic: Explore the consequences of victory in a world where the magical apocalypse was only the beginning.
- Complex Anti-Heroes: Follow a found family of broken characters—including assassins, rogues, and con-men—as they navigate a world of moral ambiguity.
- Terrifying New Threats: Face a cult of philosopher-assassins and horrors born from logic in a city run by a ruthless criminal underworld.
- Psychological & Psionic Warfare: Delve deeper into a hard magic system where battles are fought in the mind and the deepest traumas are weaponized.
- High-Stakes Heist Adventure: Join a desperate mission into a reality-bending pocket dimension to steal a legendary artifact from an unbreachable fortress.
If you love stories of found families battling cosmic horror, criminal underworlds, and their own inner demons, then you must continue the journey with the second book in the Chronicle of the Withered Hand series. The world is dying, and the only cure might be the poison itself.
Echo Of Ruin
By: A.D. Sterling
Narrated by: Virtual Voice
Length: 6 hrs and 54 mins
Release date: 09-06-25
Language: English
Format and Bitrate: M4B@125 kbps
Size: 377.07 MB