The Infernal have a word for him: magata. Empty. Barren. A heart so hollowed by exile that even the plague can’t find purchase there. While it is meant as a curse, Ara Storm has learned to use it as a weapon.
He carries the soul of an alpha death-demon named Koki-Ten locked in a fang-dagger across his chest. Not because he won that fight, but because he survived it, which isn’t the same thing at all. He’s the unchained son of a fallen emperor who has turned the entire realm of Niantia into a newborn hell.
When Ara sails north into the ruined realm, he finds a land of lost cities, roaming hordes, and citizens whose hearts are slowly being consumed by a pestilence that turns the living into demons from within. At the center of it all waits Qreyl, a city built as one enormous demonic altar, a city that consumes everything it touches, its emperor chained to a black soul, its walls ringed by a horde of incomprehensible size.
He’s going anyway.
The Devil and Koki-Ten is the seventh book in Rory Surtain’s Demon in Exile saga. It’s a first-person dark fantasy of brutal consequence and hard-won grace, where the hero can heal everyone around him but not himself, where forgiveness is the only power Hell can’t overcome, and where the difference between a devil and a prince depends entirely on who’s left standing when the Black Wind finally turns.
The choice is yours. The plague is his. Wherever it leads.
Appropriate for Adult and Young Adult readers.
Indie novelist, editor, publisher, and artist. Chasing imagination in the realm of science fantasy. Divergent.
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