Black Stone Heart

## Synopsis

A broken man, Khraen awakens alone and lost. His stone heart has been shattered, littered across the world. With each piece, he regains some small shard of the man he once was.

He follows the trail, fragment by fragment, remembering his terrible past.

There was a woman.

There was a sword.

There was an end to sorrow.

## Summary

Khraen wakes up and crawls from the earth, more animal than man. He kills another version of himself and feels a desire to take the obsidian heart. Upon absorbing that shard, he regains some memories of who he once was. He realizes his heart and been shattered and shards are spread across the world. He feels a pull to travel south and runs into a caravan going to Taramlae City, which is in the same direction. He meets Shalayn who is a caravan guard. He realizes everyone has a disdain and fear of him because of his skin color. They are attacked by some undead creatures and Khraen goes into the forest to find the necromancer controlling them. He finds Henka, who explains that she was turned into a necromancer by someone who has her heart. He leaves her unharmed after he senses something familiar about her. His friendship with Shalayn develops as they travel and becomes a romance. They make it to Taramlae City which is controlled by wizards. Khraen realizes he has an innate hatred for them. Khraen and Shalayn stay in The Dripping Bucket where he reveals he gains memories each time he finds a shard of his heart. He senses a shard inside a wizard's tower and makes a plan to break into it. Shalayn takes Khraen to meet Tien, a wizard who is also a thief. Tien agrees to help Khraen get inside the tower, if he also retrieves a ring she wants. Using a levitation ring provided by Tien, they get to the top of the tower and enter. After several hours, they find the ring and the shard, killing a wizard in the process. They realize they are locked inside, and a week goes by as they wait for a wizard to appear. He decides to absorb the shard and then remembers he was a demonologist in the past. The ring Tien wanted holds a demon, and so Khraen puts on the ring. He is transported to a castle among floating mountains. He goes inside the castle and realizes the castle was his. He spends days inside, starving and dehydrated. He meets Nhil who presents himself as Khraen's advisor and friend. He lets him know there is a water elemental set aside for emergencies. He teaches Khraen how to summon elementals, and reveals the castle resides in a hell. Khraen also learns he has dedicated his soul to his god, but is not ready to know her name. He realizes how hungry he is, which presents a problem. The portal demon bound to the ring can only bring people to the castle, not leave, and there is no food there. He needs to use the Soul Stone in order to power the summoning of a demon to take him back. After learning the bargain and binding to summon the demon, Khraen uses the stone and summons Felkrish and locks him in a ring. He learns the skill of visualization, which is needed to teleport to a specific location. He makes it back to the wizard's tower after spending months in the hell, but Shalayn is no longer there. There is still no way out, so he visualizes the room in The Dripping Bucket. He makes it back, and heads for the cafe where he met Tien. He confronts her and she tells him Shalayn has been captured by the wizards. He gets her to agree to help him rescue Shalayn in exchange for a favor later. They plan to ambush Thalman, one of the wizards, to get the Chain of Office and get into the tower. Khraen goes to a brothel that Thalman frequents and memorizes the closet to teleport so he can teleport there later. Later, he teleports to the brothel when Thalman is sleeping and looks for the Chain of Office. A magical dagger Tien gave him flies into Thalman and kills him. He teleports to Tien's house and finds his is trapped. He confronts her. She admits she set him up, and says that Shalayn was never captured, but killed by the wizards instead. Tien says she has destroyed The Dripping Bucket and changed the closet in the brothel, making it impossible to teleport there. This leaves him with only two options. Go to the floating castle, where he wouldn't be able to escape, or teleport to his mud hut where he first woke up. He uses the Soul Stone and teleports to the mud hut, then journeys south again. he searches out Henka, and they set out in search of more shards of his heart so he can become stronger. As they travel south, Henka builds a small undead army from people and animals they come across. Khraen, Henka, and an undead guard Chalaam, go to the town of Willows on the Ridge to replenish Henka's body. Khraen struggles with the thought of killing people to maintain Henka's body warm but justifies it with his growing attraction to her, and the convenience of her army. He realizes Henka reminds him of someone he loved and lost thousands of years ago. He does not trust her with the truth of why they travel south, to find and kill Tien and avenge Shalayn's death. They arrive in Taramlae, where Khraen discovers the Dripping Bucket was not burned down, but they head to the Dragon's Cave inn to avoid memories of Shalayn. Khraen heads to the cafe to see if he can find Tien. He arrives and kills two wizards, and discovers Tien has gone south to Nachi. They head south and Khraen feels the pull of another shard nearby. They go to a farm to kill some horses so they can have undead mounts. Khraen struggles with killing people to fill his current needs versus becoming like his Demon Emperor self of old. They ride their mounts through the night and catch up to a version of Khraen. Khraen kills him and takes another obsidian shard. He remembers PalTaq, his palace there, and sacrificing thousands of people to forge his sword Kantlament, The End of Sorrow. He decides to travel to PalTaq. As they travel, Khraen feels a pull to the east, and they come across a village that is full of spirit demons and elementals. They run into Valcarb who is protecting another shard of Khraen. Khraen and his shard fight, and Henka intervenes and kills the shard, right after he hints that Henka betrayed Khraen in the past. Valcarb is now bound to Khraen. He takes the obsidian shard and absorbs it. He has a vision of the past where he sees the power the Demon Emperor used to wield, with multiple worlds of armies obeying him as he conquered new hells. Khraen wakes up knowing new demonic languages and the differences between spirit demons and manifestation demons. They go to the center of the town and find a church dedicated to the demon god Yahaarn. Khraen longs to learn more about summoning and his prior life. He realizes he need weapons and armor, so they make a plan to go to a nearby town and harvest some souls. The town has a wizard, and Khraen decides to attack and try to kill her. During the battle, Henka is almost entirely destroyed. Khraen scoops up what is left of her body, and soon discovers that Henka has been harvesting new body parts on their journey, causing Khraen to struggle with the moral and ethical questions of her needs. Back at the demon-infested village, Khraen decides they need to kill someone to harvest body parts to remake Henka. He goes back to the town and encounters another wizard and kills him. He harvests his body parts for Henka and then kils some other villagers from the nearby town. They flee south before more wizards come and arrive at the port city of Nachi. They decide to book passage to the islands, because even though he wants revenge for Shalayn, Khraen can feel many shards of himself out towards the ocean. Khraen wants to go and visit his castle so he can create demon bound weapons and armor. They decide he can do that while they voyage. They purchase a passage aboard the ship Habnikaav, named after the Demon Emperor's flagship. They meet the cabin boy, Brenwick Sofame, and return to town for one last night. They attempt to stay at several inns, but no one will accept them because of the color of Khraen's skin. They finally find a room at The Sleeping Inn. Khraen realizes they'll need a supply of blood for Henka to survive the voyage so they head to the docks. As they begin to search for some people to use, Khraen spots Tien leaving a building. He stabs her from behind, and then sees Tien was meeting Shalayn, who is not dead as Tien had told him. She reveals Tien was her sister and begins to attack Khraen. He knocks her unconscious and Henka urges him to kill her, but he refuses saying he needs to be better than the old version of himself. Henka wants to enslave Tien so they can have an enslaved wizard with them, but Khraen also tells her no. They decide to harvest some of the crew while onboard the ship instead of killing more people at that time. They set sail on the Habnikaav and Khraen summons Felkrish so he can travel to the floating castle to get demon bound armor and weapons and prepare himself for the war to come. Nhil tells him he doesn't have enough souls stored for both weapons and armor and so Khraen decides he wants a weapon. Nhil reveals his demon bound sword is in PalTaq where he left it. He also discloses that Henka was Khraen's wife. He realizes Henka has manipiulated him and remembers everything he doesn't. He feels betrayed but wants to trust her because of his love for her. He decides to go back and question her and the book ends.