Havenfall (Havenfall #1)
Sara Holland
A BRIEF INTRODUCTION TO THE ADJACENT REALMS
Fiordenkill
Most of Fiordenkill is encased in ice and frost. Ethereal in its beauty, Fiordenkill sparkles with ice bridges and palaces of packed snow. It seldom sees the sun, but the sky is bright with auroras and thousands of stars. Soldiers ride on wolves and great bears roam the woods; enchanted fruit grows on the trees, immune to the frost encasing their bright skins.
Compared to people of other worlds, Fiordens are thought to be noble and stoic and sometimes secretive. Fiordenkill magic can heal flesh and make plants grow.
Byrn
The massive world of Byrn swelters under the heat of two suns and three moons. Enormous, long-lived storms batter the deserts, the roiling seas, and the lightning plains, so that the ground seems to shift constantly beneath one’s feet. Millennia of elemental magic, unleashed without care for the consequences, have ravaged the world and left most of it uninhabitable to Byrnisians.
Years ago, the Silver Prince used his immense magic to tame the storms and erect a wall around his city-state, Oasis. Ever since, he has ruled in peace, keeping the storms at bay. Almost everyone living in Byrn resides within the city walls, having agreed to cease all elemental wielding—except for the nomads who remain outside and brave the lightning, hurricanes, and burning wind to keep their magic.
Solaria
Little is known about Solaria, a tiny, sealed-off world that is a hotbed of powerful, highly volatile magic. It’s thought that the people of Solaria are largely responsible for our world’s mythologies around djinni, demons, and vampires. Some call them soul-devourers. It’s been said that Solaria has no visible sun but instead has a blazing golden sky. Though Solarians can take many shapes, their beast forms all bleed dark blue blood.
The doorway to Solaria was sealed off years ago after a deadly incident that took place at Havenfall. Solarians are no longer welcome at the inn and they are not part of the Peace Treaty alliance of the Last Remaining Adjacent Realms. There are rumors that Solarians snuck into the other realms before the door was closed, and that they still roam the worlds.
Haven
Haven is what we know as the human world. It is the only realm without natural magic, which is why the people of other realms call it Haven—a safe place, a neutral place. The existence of other worlds have been kept secret from humankind. This is the number one rule that all the Realms must abide by. Humans can’t live in the other Realms. Their biology prevents them from surviving conditions outside of Haven for more than a few hours.
Omphalos: The Inn at Havenfall
All the realms intersect at Havenfall, through a series of doorways connected by tunnels hidden beneath the Rocky Mountains. These doorways have been guarded by us Innkeepers for as long as anyone can remember. There is a radius around the doorways within which people from all realms can breathe safely and not sicken, as people usually do in worlds not their own.
The Inn at Havenfall was built on this spot as was the town of Haven—so named because, to the people of the realms, the town and the inn represent our whole world.
There used to be many more worlds accessible from the inn, but over the centuries some doorways have closed due to the inscrutable forces that govern the realms. Only the doorway to Solaria has been sealed shut on purpose, for the protection of the Last Remaining Adjacent Realms.
The Annual Peace Summit
On the longest day of our year, Fiordens witness a blazing, multicolored aurora in their dark sky and Byrn undergoes a simultaneous eclipse of its three moons. This is the solstice. On this day every summer, travelers can pass safely through the doorways into the Inn at Havenfall—the neutral realm that serves as host to them all.
During this special time, the inn holds its annual peace summit, where delegates from all the realms negotiate trade and political agreements by day and dance in the ballroom by night to celebrate the diversity and unity of all the inn’s guests.
PROLOGUE
The first breath of air Marcus takes in another realm feels like lightning. Human lungs aren’t built for this world, for Byrn. He doesn’t know how long he has before they give up and he needs to stagger back through the shining doorway to Haven.
But every new Innkeeper is duty-bound to visit all the remaining worlds, if only once—that’s what his great-grandmother, Annabelle, who ran the Inn at Havenfall for almost a century, told him before she died. So Marcus doesn’t flinch, not with twenty nobles of Byrn lined up in a semicircle around the portal, waiting with scaled cheekbones glittering in the orange light. All of them are gathered, curious to hear the new portal-keeper speak. Behind them, clusters of metallic buildings shimmer against a sky the color of flame.
Havenfall is all celebration, all pomp and ritual and freely flowing spirits, in stark contrast to this intense formality. Now is Marcus’s time. The book he brought with him is heavy in his hands.
He will only read one page. There is more to the peace treaty that he won’t have time to recite: the names of the delegates who died at the inn when the Solarians rioted; the decree to forever seal the gateway to Solaria with old magic; Havenfall’s promise to hunt down all of those who escaped. A reminder to Haven, Fiordenkill, and Byrn that even after nearly a hundred years, rogue Solarians still roam their realms.
Some still blame humans, blame Haven, for the bloodshed. Marcus knows that. It’s now his responsibility, as the portal-keeper, to keep everyone safe. Not just the Byrnisians and Fiordens, but his beloved Graylin; Marcus’s sister, Sylvia; and her children—who will one day inherit the Inn at Havenfall and all that comes with it.