The Tangled Lands

In a ruined fantasy world, magic has a devastating cost: each use makes bramble spread, choking land and cities and sending the touched into a deadly sleep. The last major city, Khaim, survives under harsh laws that forbid magic for most people while the powerful continue to use it for themselves.

The book is told through four separate stories, each following a different person caught inside this system: an alchemist, an executioner’s daughter, refugees struggling to survive, and a blacksmith’s daughter. Their lives are shaped by family duty, survival, violence, and the hard choices forced on people living under oppression.

As each story unfolds, the city’s corruption and the bramble’s spread expose the damage caused by greed, inequality, and overuse of power. The narratives remain largely distinct, but together they build a broader picture of a world in collapse, with only partial hope and no single unifying resolution.