First Shard of Light: Book One of the Shards of Light series

In order to stop the brutal War of Magics raging within the mortal plain, Ri’Lanna, the Goddess of Light, allied herself with the God of Warfare, to imprison her brother, the God of Thunder, within the celestial plain. Not only did the Goddess betray her brother, but she also tricked the God of Warfare by stealing magic from the rest of the known world. Ri’Lanna then created a place of salvation for a few handfuls of her faithful, within a small nation she has named the Beqa’vah. But in stealing magic from the rest of the known world, Ri’Lanna unknowingly unbalanced the cosmos, creating a thinning in the fabric that is the membrane between the world of the living and the emptiness of the Void, where those who have earned eternal damnation reside. Fortunately for both the humans who occupy the mortal plain and their divine counterparts, Ri’Lanna’s half-sister, Zarta, the Goddess of Flame, has foreseen the eventuality of the barrier between the worlds failing and has taken steps to prevent the collapse of the universe by sundering the soul of one of her faithful followers, placing a half of the soul into the bodies of a set of twins separated at birth born within her sister’s protected domain. Danas, the boy, grows up to become a devoted disciple in the Attendant Orders of the Goddess of Light, while the girl, Yachana, is deemed “Zarta Touched” at birth, condemning her to a lifetime in the dark of a cave lit by the flame of a single candle. Her simple needs are met by a group of mystics calling themselves the Daughters of the Flame, providing for the girl in the hope she will be the prophesized oracle who will one day release the souls of all of Zarta’s servants, both living and dead, during the apocalypse that will save humanity from the destruction their Red Goddess has foreseen.