Ash and Bowstring

Before the world learned to fear his name, Jager Barenklauen was just a hunter's son.

Raised in the mountain villages of Eastern Chaltyr, where old ways still held against the creeping influence of imperial magic, Jager learned the bow before he learned politics, and the weight of survival before the meaning of peace. His father-war-scarred and taciturn-taught him that monsters were real, but restraint mattered more than strength. For a time, that was enough.

Then curiosity crossed a line it should not have.

One forbidden choice cost Jager everything: his friends, his home, and the quiet certainty of who he was meant to be. Exiled and haunted-by guilt, by voices only he can hear, and by something far older that has begun to take notice-Jager is forced into the wilds with nothing but his skill, his bow, and the growing sense that the world is far darker than most dare to see.

As he struggles to survive, Jager discovers that monsters are not always born-they are uncovered. And some hunters are forged not by glory, but by what they refuse to become.

Ash and Bowstring is the opening volume of an epic fantasy saga about restraint and consequence, ancient evils stirring beneath forgotten stones, and a young ranger learning that killing monsters may be the only way to keep his own darkness at bay.

The hunt has begun.