Heartbeat

Broken Planet What is set forth in this book is the history of a broken, dying land, that has somehow lived on for longer than the gods intended. But it persisted even without their intervention, and despite the fact that it was split into four equal pieces after a cataclysmic event that rendered each piece floating in space by itself, and only connected together by bridges of light that the inhabitants of the planet deemed too treacherous to cross. For when you reach the light bridge, the air grows cold, and the stars take over the sky no matter what time of day it is. And if you leap or fall from the side of the bridge, you will disappear into the abyss, lost forever to the monstrous emptiness. The secret to life on Aya is and always has been the keeper of the world soul. This is always a young woman, raised in the temples of Aransia, the desert city where the goddess Tars’keli herself is said to have been born, and reborn throughout the centuries in the form of a girl born with a golden heart outside of her body. The girl with a golden heart always grows up to become head priestess at the temple, and the keeper always becomes her attendant and guardian. The two belong together just as the stars and moon belong with the night sky. They cannot escape this fated pairing even though often they never truly understand why they are drawn to each other. The keeper of the world soul is a temple girl when she is young, tending to the fires of the priestesses, and keeping watch over the rituals. She never knows what she is, for if she or others knew, she might be in grave danger. There are privileged few in the entire world who possess the knowledge of the keeper’s existence. No one outside of these few has ever heard the legend, and it is kept sacred and secret by these privileged men and women. The keeper’s premature death would lead to the collapse of the world itself, and everything would blink out of existence in a single moment. She does not know it, but she is in fact protected by the gods for this reason, but this protection only lasts until she is of age. Then she grows into a young woman of great resourcefulness and bravery, and it is by her own wits that she protects herself from the harsh land. Aya has been quite lucky, in that no keeper of the world soul has ever died before her appointed time, before the world is renewed, and the soul takes a long and well-deserved rest before it moves into a new girl. But the thought that the keeper might die prematurely is still believed to be quite possible by those who know of the sacred role. If the keeper were to die early, it would mean the gods had decided to let Aya fade out of existence. It is in the central temple of Tars’keli in the desert city of Aransia where Akshara is born a temple girl without the slightest clue of who or what she is. But perhaps fate will show her a way that has never been given to another keeper before in the history of this broken world... Perhaps Akshara will be the first keeper to know her true nature and this knowledge will prove dangerous for all of Aya.