CHARACTERS
Sunset
Sole survivor of House Gamal, Sunset is pure of heart but has been conditioned by years of captivity to be frightened, guarded, and distrustful. Injured into amnesia when she was kidnapped during the raid that destroyed her house and family, she remembers almost nothing of who she was—or why others seem so determined to control her.
After escaping DeBeaux's palace, Sunset ventures into the horrific worldscape of Erebos in search of a legendary portal and the truth about her past. But freedom brings a new mystery: a strange and increasingly powerful force is awakening within her, one she neither understands nor knows how to control.
Sunset's greatest struggle may not be surviving the dangers around her, but discovering who she is when everything she's been taught about herself may be a
lie.
Sarik
Son of Madame DeBeaux, Sarik has spent much of his life believing Sunset is destined to become his wife. He genuinely loves her—but his love is tangled with entitlement, possessiveness, and a lifetime spent under the influence of a mother whose ambitions reach far beyond her son.
Powerful and increasingly prone to violent fits of rage, Sarik struggles to understand why Sunset fears him and why the future he was promised is slipping away. The harder he tries to reclaim what he believes should be his, the further he pushes Sunset from him.
Sarik may be one of the greatest threats in Sunset's path—but whether he is simply an enemy, another victim of House DeBeaux, or something painfully caught between the two is far less certain.
Madame DeBeaux
Matriarch of House DeBeaux and the architect of Sunset's captivity, Madame DeBeaux has built her power through manipulation, deception, and an absolute willingness to use the people closest to her. Years ago, she turned others against House Gamal and helped destroy the family Sunset barely remembers. Her reasons for keeping its sole survivor close, however, reach far beyond simple revenge.
DeBeaux treats affection as another form of leverage. Her children, her allies, and even those who believe themselves closest to her are valuable only for as long as they serve her ambitions. Seduction, intimidation, cruelty, and calculated tenderness are simply different tools for achieving the same thing: control.
But beneath DeBeaux's hunger for power lies something even stronger—a refusal to surrender to mortality itself. Whatever Sunset possesses, DeBeaux believes it may hold the key to the future she has spent years engineering. And she has no intention of allowing Sunset to choose that future for herself.
Harax Lor
Six centuries old and possessing one of the most formidable scientific minds Erebos has ever known, Harax Lor helped transform his world's civilization over the course of his extraordinary lifetime. But for all he has witnessed and accomplished, one piece of his past becomes unexpectedly important again when a young woman he once knew finds her way back into his life.
When Lor first encounters Sunset as an adult, he doesn't recognize the frightened child he once instructed—and attacks her as an intruder. Their reunion soon forces both of them to confront fragments of a history Sunset can no longer remember and Lor has spent years believing was lost.
Ancient, brilliant, physically diminished and sustained by technology, Lor carries knowledge reaching far beyond science alone. What he knows about Erebos, its forgotten history, and the possibility of worlds beyond it may make him one of Sunset's greatest allies—and one of the few people capable of helping her understand where she truly came from.
Eidjo Bal
Sarik's closest friend since childhood, Eidjo Bal has spent his life standing beside a prince he privately believes is no better than he is. Charming, quick-witted, and fiercely competitive, Eidjo has watched Sarik receive the status, admiration, and privilege of his bloodline while quietly wondering how much of it the prince ever truly earned.
Years of friendship have done little to extinguish that resentment. Eidjo can laugh with Sarik, fight beside him, and call him brother while still measuring himself against him—and increasingly imagining what life might look like if he no longer had to stand in Sarik's shadow. When others recognize that hunger in him, friendship becomes frighteningly easy to exploit.
Eidjo is clever enough to see opportunities others miss, but not always wise enough to see where they lead. His greatest danger may be the belief that he is finally taking control of his own destiny when, in reality, he may simply be allowing someone else to choose it for him.
Vessa Excrutia
Sarik's cousin and one of House DeBeaux's most formidable operatives, Vessa Excrutia has earned a fearsome reputation through extraordinary skill in combat, espionage, and assassination. Disciplined, lethal, and fiercely loyal, she has spent much of her life believing that service to her house and obedience to Madame DeBeaux are inseparable from her own sense of honor.
But Vessa's loyalty is not blind. Beneath the hardened warrior is a woman governed by a personal code—one increasingly tested by the actions she is expected to carry out and the people she is expected to serve. For Vessa, following an order is easy. Living with what that order makes her may be something else entirely.
Caught between duty and conscience, Vessa faces a question more dangerous than any opponent she has encountered: what does honor demand when loyalty and morality no longer point in the same direction?
An Bal
Once the Prime Lady Attendant to Sunset’s mother, Queen K’Millah Gamal, An Bal was among the few to survive the destruction of House Gamal. Gravely wounded in the attack, she was rescued by the inhabitants of a secret city hidden deep within the Grimwood—and given a second life in a form unlike the one she had known.
Rebuilt as a BioCria, a fusion of living being and machine, An Bal carries the memories of a world that Sunset herself can no longer remember. She knew House Gamal before its fall. She knew Sunset’s mother. And she remembers the child Sunset was before violence, captivity, and amnesia erased nearly everything that connected her to that life.
For Sunset, discovering An Bal may mean far more than finding another survivor. She is a living connection to the family, history, and identity Sunset has spent her entire journey trying to recover.
Cheri
Madame DeBeaux's closest advisor and confidante, Cheri occupies a position that should make her one of the most powerful women in House DeBeaux. Instead, proximity to power has left her dangerously vulnerable to the woman she serves.
What began as loyalty—and something far more intimate—has become a relationship built on dependence, fear, and an increasingly unpredictable cycle of affection and cruelty. Cheri understands DeBeaux perhaps better than anyone, including how dangerous she can be. But knowing the truth about someone and being able to free yourself from them are very different things.
Caught between devotion, self-preservation, and the consequences of remaining at DeBeaux's side, Cheri has become both participant and victim in the world her mistress has created. The question is no longer whether Cheri can see what DeBeaux truly is, but whether she can survive being close enough to see it.