Victor Martyrdr

Power was never meant to be contained. In a world governed by the Spire's meticulous order, magic is a commodity harvested before it can disrupt kingdoms. Girls born with potential are taken and stripped of identity. Rulers are bound by alliance, not blood. And the balance of power never wavers, until one witch refuses obedience. Solynthia Anseline was a loyal Sister of the Spire, until an order fractures her faith: prepare a golden-eyed infant for extraction.
Instead, she steals the child and vanishes, sacrificing everything for a love the Spire cannot tolerate. Thirteen years later, the sanctuary is destroyed, the child taken and Solynthia unmade by a curse that turns her body to sand. The infant, Aelira, enters the world as property, not a person, yet her power refuses containment. Drawn toward a destiny she does not understand, she becomes a force that unravels the very structures meant to command her.
As kingdoms reel, refugees drift toward the desert that should kill them but instead sustains them. The myth of the Sand Queen rises. The Spire tightens its grip. And Aelira discovers that the world shifts not with war, but with truth. The Sand Queen's Awakening is the first volume of The Sand Cycle, an epic fantasy of power, defiance and the cost of choosing one's own destiny.