Orden is a world fraught with dangerous creatures. And that is only the nobility of the Great Houses. There are far more sinister and ancient terrors than mages and steel. Among them, old gods and their heralds, relics of a forgotten age priming a return long prophesied to dawn in fire by the oddly vanished Sibyls of Ornhammer. It has been centuries since the Blackwood Rebellion, a bloody civil war that saw the House of Thainheart emerge supreme and foment a royal dynasty. But the pursuit of power is seldom dormant, defeat is merely a delay, the sons of Orden will stake their claim to the crown in blood. Such claims are bolstered by rumors insisting King Charl Thainheart is gravely ill. With his only son Hylan the lone obstacle, alliances are forged and pacts rewritten in a bid to sway the tide of power. The king’s own brother, spurred by his wife, plots the murder of the crown prince, but the outcome will haunt them all. To the south is a young man born orphaned, Graer Black. A soldier in Lord Hyche’s Brotherhood, he has risen to one of the Beasted men, an elite corps whose souls have merged with wolves which become their battle companions. His past comes to find him as he enters a pact with a spirit at a terrible price. Fates collide in the dance for Orden. And in the furor, a queen to the east looks on, eager to wade into the fray Fallen Empire is the debut novel from Gari Punungwe. Orden is a rich and complex world driven by grey characters. Politics and Power collide in this fantastical world.