Because of the Storm: Book One
By morning, nearly everyone is gone.
Across the island, homes stand open, meals have been abandoned, and entire communities have fallen silent. Flyers, Swimmers, and Landbound—three peoples separated by generations of distance, suspicion, and inherited certainty—have vanished almost without a trace.
Only thirteen remain.
Three Flyers. Eight Swimmers. Two Landbound.
Some of them had barely known the others existed. Some had every reason to distrust one another. Yet with their families missing and no explanation for what has happened, the thirteen are forced into an alliance none of their peoples would have imagined.
Their search leads west, beyond familiar territory and into a landscape marked by forgotten roads, ruined crossings, abandoned settlements, and evidence that the history they inherited may be incomplete. The farther they travel, the more difficult it becomes to separate what they know from what generations before them merely believed.
And always, the storm follows.
It advances when the winds should hold it back. It waits when it should overtake them. It changes course, changes speed, and seems to respond to the movements of the people fleeing before it. What first appeared to be a natural disaster begins to feel like something far more unsettling.
The thirteen do not know who took their families. They do not know what waits beyond the western coast. And they cannot agree on whether the storm is hunting them, driving them—or leading them toward something.
But reaching the truth will require more than surviving the journey.
It will require Flyers, Swimmers, and Landbound to question the stories their peoples have told for generations—and decide whether thirteen strangers can trust one another before the storm decides for them.
Because of the Storm: Book One is a sweeping speculative adventure of mystery, survival, divided peoples, buried history, and the unlikely fellowship formed when the world everyone understood suddenly disappears.
