Gilded Iron: Book 1: Fractured Peace

By Christopher Neal

A Neo-Noir Speculative Novella by The Wayward Resonant (Christopher Neal)

Brickfield is dying slow-its bones rusted, its heart gutted, and its shadows thick with secrets no one dares name.

When former Guild operative Thomas Valentine is summoned back into the fog-soaked streets of the Republic's most broken city, he expects bad blood and older debts. What he doesn't expect is the message: a dead man's voice, a stolen relic, and a warning that sounds too much like prophecy.

The Eidolon was never supposed to reach the West. A smuggled artifact of impossible origin, it listens, it watches-and it changes whoever carries it. Now, as factions close in and the city's power grid begins to collapse, Valentine must navigate a landscape of exiles, Syndicate enforcers, and something far older than politics waking in the dark.

Told across multiple first-person perspectives-Guild spies, Syndicate assassins, and exiled royalty-Gilded Iron is a slow-burn descent into a world of whispered currencies, broken loyalties, and the things we carry when truth rusts.

This is not a story about heroes.

It's about survivors.

And some debts refuse to stay buried.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: B0F89DCVJS
• ISBN13: 9798283392172
• Release Date: May 2025
• Publisher: Independently Published
• Length: 146 Pages
• Weight: 0.33 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.3" x 5.0" x 8.0"