When Banners Bleed

When Banners Bleed - Book I of the Kagen CycleOn the world of Kagen, tradition is more than custom. It is the foundation of society.The planetary Shogunate, its powerful banner clans, and generations of warriors have built a civilization around honor, duty, bloodline, and the blade. At the Academy of Blades, young cadets are being prepared to inherit that world and defend it.Then something impossible is discovered.When Ren Arasaki, Kira Nekara, Kael Nekara, and Shai Val'Dren become entangled in the aftermath of a mysterious incident at Dock Twelve, they uncover signs of something that should not exist: an unregistered object, a strange nine-circle symbol, systems behaving in ways no one can explain, and a door hidden where no door should be.What first appears to be an isolated mystery begins to reach far beyond the docks.As political tensions sharpen and loyalties are tested, strange disturbances ripple through the Flow and Kagen's ancient infrastructure begins responding to forces its people have long forgotten. Beneath the civilization they know lies evidence of a past far older, and far more dangerous, than the histories of the Shogunate admit.At the center of it all is Kami, an ancient intelligence buried within Kagen itself, and another presence beginning to move through systems, pathways, and shadows.For Kira, Kael, Ren, and Shai, the discovery becomes something far more personal than uncovering a forgotten secret. Each is forced to confront questions of family, loyalty, identity, and duty as the world around them begins to fracture.And when banners finally bleed, Kagen will learn that some enemies do not arrive from beyond its borders.Some have been waiting beneath them.When Banners Bleed is the opening novel of the Kagen Cycle, beginning the larger Light in the Ninefold Sky saga, a science-fantasy epic of warriors and ancient machines, political intrigue and military conflict, forgotten history, family, sacrifice, and a civilization beginning to discover that its world may be only one piece of something far greater.