Draft cover · art not finalHeirs of Kaelthar · Book One
The Kaelthar Cipher
Three hundred years hidden. One archive left to lose.
Tavan Ashvane has weeks left before a faceless Consortium tears down his late father's archive. Then a Gnome's bronze sphere finds a sealed copper tube hidden in the wall, written in a cipher nobody has read in three hundred years. It points to a vault built by Kaelthar, the scholar the old coalition branded a thief and never caught. A Ledger Inquisitor is asking questions, something far older than it should be is watching the road, and every fragment has to be understood before the next one will open.
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Coming The Kaelthar Crossing
Heirs of Kaelthar · Book Two
The Kaelthar Crossing
Some work outlives the man who began it.
Kaelthar left his work unfinished, and the people who found his cipher have inherited it. Tavan and his companions now take up the debts he never lived to settle, one case at a time, while the Ledger closes in on everyone who knows his name.
Coming SoonHeirs of Kaelthar
The World
Three centuries ago, a coalition of three kingdoms destroyed the city of Caelthas and branded its greatest scholar a thief. His name was Kaelthar. He was never caught, and he left behind a cipher meant for a reader he never expected to meet.
Now a faceless Consortium is tearing down the old quarters of Ashford's Gate, a Ledger Inquisitor is asking the wrong questions, and a small band of friends is learning that Old Magic remembers more than the people who wrote the laws.
The Heirs
Tavan Ashvane
Keeper of the archive
He inherited his late father's archive in Ashford's Gate, an eviction notice, and a question his father never answered.
Vael Ostrey
Wood Elf Ranger
She reads a road the way other people read a page, and she is rarely wrong about who is following.
Thessan
Runewynx
Vael's bonded companion. Her rune-marks blaze whenever Old Magic is near, and she has opinions about sunbeams.
Garrick Tolland
Quarter-Orc Paladin
The closest thing Tavan has to an older brother. His light answers to a debt, not a god.
Mira Ilvenne
High Elf Wizard
At 127 she is precise, dry and protective of her time. She is also the only one who can read the cipher.
Fitch Copperwick
Rock Gnome Artificer
His bronze sphere finds what three centuries of searchers missed, and it does not always say why.
Oswin Barleigh
Lightfoot Halfling
A baker's son who arrives with bread, an iron-capped walking stick, and more nerve than he lets on.
Sable
Quarter-Tiefling Rogue
She reads Consortium notices more closely than the people who write them, and trusts slowly.
The Author
J. Michael Wright
I spent my mid-twenties working night shifts as a correctional officer, which is a long, dark way of saying I had plenty of time to read. Every week, I bought a stack of used books and finished them before the next rotation.
Somewhere along the way, an idea took shape: a wizard, a stone, a plan, and a ragtag group who probably should not have been trusted with any of it. I wrote a handful of chapters, stalled, and then did what people do. I went to school, built a career, got married, raised kids, and collected enough IT and security certifications to fill a bowl of alphabet soup.
Back then, my friends and I played Dungeons & Dragons and Magic several times a week, hauled our computers to LAN parties, and later moved on to EverQuest and Ultima Online. It was excellent training for building worlds and terrible for sleep.
The kids are grown now, so there is finally room. The story I abandoned came back, and this time I finished it. After more than twenty-five years in IT and cybersecurity, imagining how things can go wrong, it turns out plotting novels comes naturally.
The world, the story and the Heirs are mine, built from outlines, notes, maps and a cipher alphabet I designed myself. I used AI writing tools to help draft and revise the prose, working from that material under my direction, and I reviewed and edited every page. Every choice in it, good or bad, is mine.
Thank you for taking the time to read.
J. Michael Wright
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