The Hunting

Synopsis

The Hunting - The A Thousand Thrones's War A novel by Tolmarher Series: Continuus Nexus - Octava Saga At the sealed depths of Nod, where the chronists and public prayers of the Church of Nimrod do not come, Wotan Daneron discover the magnitude of the affront: the seed of Nimrod 85 has been stolen. A woman from the Ash World has achieved the impossible. It has touched the genetic continuity of the Hegemon and has opened a crack that no imperial decree can close. To preserve the sacred lie upon which the Neoempire rests, Wotan commands the unthinkable: the true emperor should die secretly and be replaced by an old clone. The throne will keep talking. The Empire will continue to obey. Only the truth will be buried. While Nod hides his shame under layers of silence, Salomé fled pregnant to the dirty routes of Seol. No armies or banners after her, because the Hegemon cannot confess what happened. They're after her with name-free killers, Martel accountants, Mordus traffickers, Simonites, Andalore mercenaries and priests who can ask questions without ever pronouncing his face. Salomé soon understands that his beauty and his blood and his son with his scavenges cannot go away. That's why she learns how to multiply her shadows, how to buy routes, how to sacrifice middlemen and how to turn every betrayal into a corpse. Far from Nod, far from Ash and far from Hinom, Acad was born on an abandoned mining moon, with heretics, fugitives and old machines. He does not come into the world under a throne or under a temple but through blood and scum and fear. When Exo metal responds to its presence with a purple light, Salomé understands that his son isn't a mere hidden heir: it's an unrepeatable anomaly, born from the crossing between his lineage and the green blood of Nimrod 85. A new sign. A threat that Neoempire cannot name. For years, mother and child will cross the roads of Seol: Decadent stations, clandestine ships, law-free taverns and anomaly routes where sailors are consumed with sarcophages so that others can get through the darkness. That's where Acad's gonna lose his innocence before she gets to know her. He will learn languages, knives, lies, religious memory and pain resistance. Each persecution will be a lesson. Every betrayal, a blood debt. Each refuge, a deferred grave. But the child awakes up too soon. He sees fragments of what haven't happened yet. Feel Exo metal under dead worlds. He hears terrors that don't belong at his age. Salomé wanted to raise a holy weapon against the Hegemon but begins to understand something more terrible: Acad will be his mother's instrument and Wotan's prey and Nimrod's secret bastard. That will be his own will. The Hunting is the fifth book of The War of the Mil Thrones: a story of persecution, dynastic blood and brutal survival, where an imperial lie is saved by murder, a mother turns his escape into doctrine and a child born in another's ashes begins to awaken as a living crack that can break the destiny of the Neoempire.