TERRA DELLE MORTE
This Story Doesn't Begin With Kings
I've always believed that the most powerful moments in a story aren't the explosions.
It doesn't begin with conquerors or chosen ones or prophecies handed down from on high to someone who was always going to be the hero. I've never been interested in that kind of story. The kind where destiny is clean and the protagonist is special from birth and the outcome was never really in question.
Falconeria: Trials of Ash begins with six young men on a doomed errand.
Ordinary men. Not yet aware of what has been set in motion around them. Not yet understanding that the world they were born into is about to change in ways that cannot be undone. Just six young men, riding east toward a forest that the kingdom has learned to fear.
“Far east of the kingdom lies the Terra delle Morte, a forest vast and ancient, a place where even the bravest measure their breath, and where silence grows thick upon the branches.
None who trespass its paths return unchanged. Or at all.”
This is page five. The story's engine beginning to turn. Fate's first inexorable wheel finding its momentum.
People who have seen early pages tell me Falconeria feels like Tolkien meets Game of Thrones meets Lone Wolf and Cub. Like The Last Kingdom with a spiritual dimension. I understand why they say it. But this world has always existed entirely on its own terms, built from fifteen years of living with these characters and this history and this mythology that grew out of two and a half months I spent in Umbria, Italy, absorbing a culture that understood how power and beauty and dread could all live in the same stone.
Six young men. A forest that doesn't forgive. The quiet turning of fate's first wheel.
Falconeria: Trials of Ash launches on Kickstarter Fall 2026. Follow the project at the link below and be notified when the campaign goes live.
