Life Winder

Will be updated with a weekly chapter on Sundays!

Synopsis:

The story follows a young boy named Jonah, born into a city-state of "The One," the foremost religion of Life-Winder's world. Jonah is at an age wherein every child of Giroux must select a career field to be trained in, some of which come with the dissemination of a "gift"-special powers bestowed by the remains of Saints of the One, and antithetic to "dark powers" sourced from a ritual through which a person must carve a mark into their forehead. When Jonah generates a dark power and mark without having undergone such a ritual, the course of his life is altered indefinitely.

Initially placed under guard by two knights of Giroux, they will eventually find themselves in a small fort made-town for a single purpose: to retrieve the body of a Saint who has since passed. The town, once devoted followers of The One, was abandoned by Giroux years back when the neighboring city-state of Rashaad attacked. The Saint protected them, and acted as a deterrent for the years that followed. When Rashaad receives word of his death, the knights are put in an ethical quandary: do they abandon the town and its people to certain death like Giroux had prior? Or do they disobey orders, stand their ground, and fight an army with what little they have?

A key element of the plot is a mystery that brews in the background of the pages. Years before the events of Life-Winder, the court jester for the King of Giroux was sent as a diplomat to the neighboring kingdom of Rashaad, where he was burned beyond recognition and sent back. Giroux's king, glad to have his fool return, requested a performance of his servant who, preferring death to living as he were, decides instead to insult his king at the cost of his tongue. These events set to motion a period of decay for the kingdom at large, over which the Jester sapped the health and sanity from the king, and at the present extent of which Jonah's story begins.