Punishment and Redemption (Paperback) (ISBN-13: 9798181954717)

The world was saved once. It didn't take.

Lifetimes ago, in a kingdom of ice, four souls died to hold back the dark - and failed. Now the wheel has turned again, and they are reborn in the shadow of Troy's great walls, with no memory of the fate they already share.

An architect who builds against the darkness. A fisherman who has died once already and refuses to do it again. A healer who guards what others would burn. They know only that the sea has gone wrong, that black ships are massing on the horizon, and that something ancient now wears the shape of a king.

The Obsidian King remembers everything. He carries the Void inside him like a second heart - a parasite of silence whispering him toward ruin - and he has come to finish what the desert began. But a captive healer looks at him as though he is only a man who is lost. And in the cracks of his obsidian armor, something he buried long ago begins, terribly, to glow.

As the Bronze Age burns and the line between a dream of Egypt and the waking world wears thin, the four must learn what their past lives never could: the world cannot be saved by sacrifice alone. Some things must be carried. Some things must be forgiven. And the difference between punishment and redemption may come down to a single, impossible choice.

The epic Awakenings saga reaches its breathtaking conclusion - a story of memory, ruin, and the stubborn, unkillable hope that the dark is not the end.