Alchemy of The Ash: Quintessence Transformation: When empires wage economic war, revolution must forge its own fire

The anticipated follow-up to Alchemy of The One Ring. The tyrants have fallen, but victory came with a bitter price. Following the overthrow of the Silent Board, the reformed Academy of Aethelgard faces sudden extinction. Aristocratic merchant cartels have imposed a brutal continental embargo, choking out vital resources as winter descends. While the city's kinetic power grid sputters out, a volatile black market weaponizes forbidden alchemical void engines, poisoning the lower aqueducts and threatening total civic collapse. Former revolutionary Valerius Draken must transform from a battlefield rebel into a fragile city's vanguard. With neighboring empires massing dreadnoughts on the border, Aethelgard's only survival lies beyond uncharted frontiers: an ancient, geothermal quintessence that could forever shatter the oligarchs' fuel monopolies. To save their dream of ethical science, a desperate expedition must plunge into distorted non-Euclidean wilderness, while behind the city walls, loyalists fight sabotage and street-level incursions. If they falter, the cold will claim what the war spared, reducing their free world back to ash. From author Terri Palmer comes an explosive science fantasy saga of political intrigue, gaslamp wonder, and the devastating cost of transformation.