In the glittering desert kingdom of Mesaheart, where faith is theater, justice is bought with coin, and the mines beneath the city swallow lives without a whisper, one boy is born wrong.

Pale where his people are bronzed, curious where they demand obedience, Veydris Alarast grows up seeing truths others fear to name. He asks questions the priests forbid, heals with knowledge they call forbidden, and steps deeper into the city’s cracks than any noble heir should dare.

But in Mesaheart, difference is dangerous.

As the people turn against him and the priests tighten their grip on power, Veydris finds himself stripped of protection and cast out by those who once called him their own. Hunger and hatred carve him hollow, yet in the silence of exile something sharper begins to take shape. A new kind of power. A new kind of purpose.

Whispers spread of a shadow moving beneath the mesas. A forgotten son who refuses to die quietly. A spark the city meant to crush beginning instead to burn.

The Count of the Mesahearts is a dark, atmospheric folk legend of betrayal, faith twisted into weaponry, and a man rising from the ashes of the world that tried to erase him. A tale told like the oldest stories, continuous and breathless, meant to be heard around a fire rather than dissected.

This is not the story of a chosen hero.
It is the story of what the world creates when mercy fails.