Dark Fantasy Author | Elias Fenic

Rise of The Witnesses Cover - Epic Fantasy with Found Family and Morally Grey FMC

Rise of The Witnesses
The first in an Epic Fantasy Saga featuring Found Family and a Morally Grey FMC.

She swore never to use the dark magic that shattered her home and consumed her closest friend. But the twisted temptations aren't so easily denied, not when the god of desire seeks her soul.

Sixteen-year-old Ayela survives on the scraps of Hatave's slums. Her only goal: to protect her foster siblings from their cruel caretaker. But when the sister she trusts most surrenders her soul to Erithia, the seductive god of death and desire, Ayela's home is reduced to ash.

Now haunted by divine temptations, Ayela must navigate a city where gold buys silence and mercy is a luxury of the rich. Erithia offers salvation, to restore all she's lost, but the price is her soul.

In a world of corrupting magic and veiled puppetmasters, Ayela must forge a path to survival. Together with her childhood friend, Lillia, and an exiled druid, Bahn, Ayela finds refuge in a disgraced band of mercenaries. A flicker of hope burns with this new found family. But the temptations of Erithia's magic linger, and their shadows are all too cunning. Ayela must resist the darkness clawing at her soul or become the very monster that cost her everything.

Tropes

  • Found Family,
  • Pantheon of Gods,
  • Gods and Monsters,
  • Evil is Sexy,
  • Elemental Magic,
  • Underworld,
  • The Underdog,
  • Deal with The Devil,
  • LGBT,
  • Friends to Lovers,
  • Flawed Gods,
  • You Were My Brother

Trigger Warnings

  • Abuse,
  • Gore,
  • Addiction,
  • Abandonment

a series for adult sword and sorcery fans, slow-burn romance, and villainous gods. Perfect for readers who love Dungeons & Dragons, complex morally grey characters, and high-stakes fantasy adventure with LGBTQ+ characters.

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The Epic Fantasy World of Albrene

Dive into a dark fantasy world tested and evolved through a decade of Dungeons & Dragons games, short stories, and novels by Elias Fenic

Model of the cosmology of Blight of Divinity, divided by the domains of the gods and their planes

The First in an Epic Dark Fantasy Saga

Rise of The Witnesses is the first in a dark fantasy saga. It is to be organized into trilogies, each following a seperate cast and culminating in an overarching plot of world-shaking proportion. Explore a morally gray diverse cast in each novel where modern and traditional fantasy/epics collide in a world forged in tabeltop roleplaying games.

See the Series Roadmap
Illustration of a European dragon roaring over a cloudy mountain range. The cover photo for a dark fantasy short story written by Elias Fenic

Why Dark Fantasy

Elias writes dark fantasy because it contains some of the most gritty, and realistic worlds where perfect endings are never guaranteed. Within this genre authors are free to bring aspects of horror, gore, betrayal, murder, addiction, and other concepts as they explore the darker side of humanity. This is the genre Elias has always enjoyed reading and consuming, and is the genre that he will always enjoy writing.

Rise of The Witnesses is classified as a dark fantasy due to its exploration of addiction, gore, and gritty world. Here puppet-master gods pull the strings of mortals in a dance of death.

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The Fantasy Books That Inspired Me