She Sat Alone

Liadel was whole once. Two moons in the sky. Cities built into canyon walls. Roads that connected nations across a continent.

Then the Devouring came - something from beyond the stars that consumed the moons, shattered the sky, and left the world in ruin. That was centuries ago. Now the desert stretches where valleys used to be. Roads reach for towns that no longer exist. The people who survived have only fire-lit stories to explain what they lost.

A man finds a woman dying alone beneath a set of stairs. He doesn't know her name - only that she shouldn't die alone, and so she won't.

He picks her up. He carries her.

As Rain - the name she chooses because she can't remember her own - slowly recovers, fragments surface: a village that burned her things. A river that moved when she touched it. A power she doesn't understand. She doesn't know who she is. She knows he stayed.

And Civ begins to notice that the earth responds to him in ways it shouldn't. That something ancient lives behind both their eyes. That what consumed the moons is not finished with the world.

The love that doesn't announce itself - it simply refuses to leave. A post-apocalyptic world that still remembers what it was. A slow-burn romance that earns every moment across desert, rainforest, ancient ruins, and a community fractured by the very people who might save it.

For readers who want Tolkien's world-grief, Salvatore's emotional gut-punches, and a love story that trusts you enough to take its time.

Book One of The Shattered Moons trilogy.