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Blood Debts and Dragon Bones: The Thief Who Stole Death

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"I stole from Death. Now I AM Death. And the god I robbed wants me dead—or worse, wants me back." Shattered Realms has the best thieves, and Kaida Thornwick is one of them. For five years, she's been stealing to pay off her younger sister's life debt to the Crimson Cartel. And she has to be. One more big score, and Mira goes free. The job is easy, but it looks impossible: break into the Hollow Citadel, take the Bone Crown from Death's vault, and give it to her unknown client. No one has ever taken something from a god. So Kaida is willing to give it a shot. She does well. She does indeed pull it off. Then Death himself shows up in her hiding place, but he's not what the stories said he would be. Tall, devastatingly beautiful, and totally furious, Azrael the Soul-Keeper offers her a choice: return what she stole, or he'll drag her to the afterlife immediately. She can't return it, though. The Bone Crown has fused with her skull, designating her as Death's Heir—the human picked to take over his divine role when he dies. And there's a problem: Death isn't meant to have an heir. The Crown was sealed away ages ago for a reason. By stealing it, Kaida has sparked an ancient failsafe. Now she and Azrael are bonded—sharing thoughts, feelings, and life force. When she bleeds, he feels it. When he reaps souls, she experiences their final moments. They have thirty days before the bond completes and Kaida becomes the new Death, trapping Azrael in mortal form and sending him to eventual human death. Neither of them wants this. But breaking the bond needs something impossible: stealing three pieces of Azrael's true name from the three most dangerous beings in the Realms—a fallen god, a nightmare queen, and the mystery client who hired Kaida in the first place. As they're forced into an unwilling partnership, pulling off increasingly impossible heists while the divine world hunts them, Kaida learns three terrible truths: The client who hired her is Azrael's old enemy, engineering this to destroy him. Her sister's life-debt is linked to a conspiracy that reaches back to the Divine Sundering itself. And Azrael didn't just lose his crown—he WANTED someone to steal it, because being Death has become a jail he's desperate to escape, even if it means dying to do so. The best thief in the Realms stole immortality. Now she has to steal something even harder—a future where neither of them has to die alone.
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Book 1 of Rebirth of the Technomage Saga: Earth’s Awakening

Stolen at birth and crushed beneath her step-family's cruelty, Raven awakens on her seventeenth birthday to memories spanning ninety-nine lifetimes—and this time, she plans to change everything. Once called Mara Brenner, a forgotten girl hidden in a servant's robes, she now remembers every betrayal, every death, every moment of suffering across nearly a century of lives. In each existence, she endured enslavement, loss, and the tragic death of her child. But death was never her ending—it was her education. Blessed with a rare tri-bloodline combining Dragon strength, Lín healing, and Zhào wisdom, Raven carries within her soul-space ten mystical Blood Essence Beads. Each bead holds the power to awaken a fragment of her divine body, rebuilding her from bone to spirit while granting mastery over lost technomagic arts: alchemy, artifact forging, runes, and the fusion of magic with cutting-edge science. Yet each awakening will test her mind, heart, and will to their very limits. Around her looms an empire ruled by the ruthless Eight Great Families, where noble bloodlines battle for supremacy in a brutal 100-Year Tournament. Hidden beneath them lurk the secret cultivation clans—ancient powers manipulating bloodlines and history itself. Her stepsister, Amara, pampered and poisonous, conspires to steal both her name and destiny, guided by a devourer seed that whispers corruption into willing ears. What Raven doesn't yet know will shake the foundations of reality: she is a Pillar Soul—one of the fundamental anchors holding Ascara's existence together. If she falls to darkness, the entire plane collapses into the void. To protect her world, she must locate and awaken the other Pillar Souls scattered across the world: a dying child, a broken soldier, a fallen saint, a betrayed lover, and others—each a fragment of Ascara's strength, each teetering on the edge of corruption. Time is running short. The Great Shift approaches in five years—when spiritual energy will surge back into a world that has forgotten magic. As technology begins to fail and ancient powers stir, Raven must navigate step-family betrayal, aristocratic oppression, and imperial conspiracies while a darker truth emerges: the Devourers, cosmic parasites born from primordial hunger, seek to twist her suffering into corruption and drag Ascara into eternal darkness. Standing between her and salvation are false allies and tragic enemies like Kael Xuán—heir to the ruling family and her betrayer across multiple lifetimes—while the shadowy SIS organization sacrifices innocents in the name of maintaining "order." Only one figure recognizes her true nature: the exiled Keeper of the Accord, an immortal guardian bound by cosmic law to protect Ascara's souls. In him, Raven may find not only a reluctant ally but an echo of her grandparents' forbidden love—proof that loyalty and sacrifice can triumph against the tide of ambition and despair. In a fractured empire where ancient cultivation lies broken, magic is dismissed as myth, and technology serves as the ultimate weapon, one forgotten girl will rise to reshape the fate of worlds. But first, she must survive becoming the most dangerous thing in existence: herself. ◊ ◊ ◊ Not suitable for readers under 18 or those sensitive to intense emotional/violent content. Reader discretion is strongly advised. Join me on Discord: https://discord.gg/mvwer8QhHz
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