When a young smith's hamlet is threatened by a dark power thought long vanquished from the world, will he and his unlikely allies be able to end the threat before it's too late?

The story will be updated every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday until complete.

Community Reviews(2)

JimjamRoyal Road

★★★★★ 4.5

The story begins with (or rather, in the meddle of) the attack on the main character’s village by bandits and undead. Our hero, Riggs, is tasked with finding and slaying the evil that is behind the attack after a mysterious stranger arrives to save him. It's basically a "hero's journey" story, and for all that it has the common tropes of this type of story, it is well executed.
The characters are pretty well written. There’s Riggs, the warrior, Lyraal, the sorcerer, and Noctessa, a druid/ranger. The story is told exclusively from Riggs POV, so we don’t get to learn that much about the others, save for tidbits they drop in conversations. Still, the author does a pretty good job of fleshing them out in the short time we know them. Lyraal is probably the most interesting character, and it’s unfortunate that we don’t learn more about her.
No complaints about the grammar, they style of the writing is pretty straightforward, but it works. It was a bit jarring to be suddenly dropped in the middle of a battle, but you can pretty quickly piece together what’s happening. There was some internal dialogue where Rigg’s past experience fuel his self-doubt that could have benefitted from some way to separate it from his own internal dialogue. Maybe something like “a dead voice whispered in his ear.” It’ a minor quibble, but there was also a fair amount of putting emphasis on certain words by bolding them, which makes them stick out too much. Instead, they should probably just be normal font, or italiscized at most.
I feel it could benefit from a prologue/epilogue. The story takes place in a pretty small region; it would be nice to see a bit more of the wider world. Still, this was a pretty fun story to read. Overall, I’d recommend it.

librarysmilesRoyal Road

★★★ 3.0

Once upon a time, Riggs Korjak fought zombies and joined two ladies to make his most precious person re-dead.
The story is basically about fighting zombies. It's like the first chapter to most apocalypse stories. In fact, this story feels like a side quest or a prologue to a larger story.

The Desecrated Keep (Completed)

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Chapters(11 total)

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Community Reviews(2)