The Devil's Branding Iron (Paperback) (ISBN-13: 9798275888263)

The frontier is dying by inches, the sun a bloodshot eye over a land scraped raw. Out on those cracked plains rides a man the world has forgotten twice over.

They call him Seth now, though his true name is Silas. His face is clay fired in harsh weather, his soul a ledger of every demon he has dragged screaming back into the dark. His weapon is not a revolver or a rifle, but a blackened length of twisted iron, its serrated sigil forged in a place no preacher dares to name. The Devil's Branding Iron does not simply kill. It marks. It claims. Every demon branded by its glowing tip vanishes from the world, its essence chained to the metal and, unseen, to the man who wields it.

For years, Silas has believed himself a hunter of the unholy, an executioner stalking the desolate towns where crawling shadows feed on despair. In a forsaken saloon called The Last Chance, he burns a succubus out of the skin of a saloon girl named Lily and leaves Redemption Gulch in ruins. In the booming mining camp of Black Mesa, he confronts a silken-tongued Incubus fattened on greed and hysteria, shattering its hold with fire and the Iron's blistering brand.
Each victory feels emptier than the last.

When he discovers an old, leather-bound journal hidden among a dead magnate's gold, Silas learns the truth that tears the floor from under his life. The Branding Iron is not a righteous instrument at all. It was never crafted to punish demons. It was made to harvest them. Each mark binds another infernal soul to the wielder, weaving a reservoir of power behind the hunter's eyes. His father carried the Iron before him and paid the slow, ugly price. Names forgotten. Identity eroded. Humanity hollowed out, until even "Seth" was just another mask for a man being eaten from the inside.
The line between hunter and host is not a line at all. It is a slow, inevitable slide.

Author: Andrew C. Schisas
ISBN-13: 9798275888263
Publisher: Independently Published
Language: English
Published: 11/24/2025
Pages: 224
Format: Paperback
Weight: 0.50lbs
Size: 8.00h x 5.00w x 0.47d