u/thearchiviststylus

Hi everyone,

​I am just really trying to get some perspective or views: I've officially launched my first epic fantasy novel. It’s a project I’ve been working on for ten years, with the last three spent writing fully full-time. I would really appreciate any and all feedback from this community. Especially regarding plot or characters.

​For the last decade, I was a corporate executive working in SaaS sales. While most of my colleagues spent their time reading self-help books like How to win friends and influence people, I turned to fantasy and sci-fi worlds to escape. I wanted stories that showed the best and worst of humanity in all its variations.

​As an introvert, survival in that world required a bit of a coping mechanism. Imagining my bosses were dragons or villains allowed me to view the corporate ladder as a game, and ironically, that comfort started coming across as confidence.

​Eventually, those corporate "dragons" and scenarios became more and more real, ultimately transforming into a book. The characters in Breath Unearthed are all based on people I’ve met in real life—just wrapped in a gritty, cyberpunk-progression fantasy flavor.

​It’s an incredible and scary feeling to finally have Book One out in the world. Since I'm new to the publishing side of things, I'd love to know: for those who have made the leap from a traditional career to writing, what was the biggest surprise you encountered during your first launch?

https://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/B0H1R8CXN6/ref=tmm\_kin\_swatch\_0

Prologue:

Isaac walked out and the wings caught the light and Khalen forgot, for one full second, that they were going to try to kill him.

Not decoratively — structurally. The crystal plates threw the Crucible’s light back in fractured angles, edges running obsidian-dark where the mineral had compressed densest, translucent at the thinner sections where the internal geometry showed through: an interlocking lattice that hadn’t grown randomly. That had grown toward something. That had taken years to become what it was.

Then Isaac’s hand moved to his sword hilt and Khalen looked at the blade.

Standard dueling length. Single edge. But the guard was integrated with the wing’s forearm housing — a mounting that let the right wing brace behind the sword arm, turning forearm and crystal plate into a single reinforced striking surface. Someone had designed that. Someone who had been thinking about how wings and blade could work as one system rather than two separate things.

Khalen’s right hand found his own hilt.

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This is the beginning of the actual book. I'm so shocked they are so confident in their ability to tell an AI generated synopsis? Not a word of this was AI generated. I've written over a million words it really hurts for a mod to just callously assume this and just delete the post. You honestly get more than the two words on instagram and they don't delete your post. Who are they helping with this gatekeeping.

Now here is my actual content please let me if anyone can provide some feedback. Thank you.

Synopsis-

Two brothers. A healer. An archivist who forgot them all.

​Separated by a whispering god and the rediscovery of a fallen world.

​Khalen spent six years below the Rim, fighting monsters in buried civilisations and uncovering secrets the world forgot on purpose.

​He surfaces with a missing limb, a ship that is learning to BREATHE, and a nine-thousand-year-old skull at his belt that has been waiting for exactly this moment.

​Now he's racing to reach his brother before a buried prison is opened.

​Its spawn don't kill civilizations. They replace them.

​Last time, they buried the world to save it.

​This is the story of what comes next. With magic in every breath.

​For fans of Six of Crows, The Poppy War, and The Stormlight Archive.

No stats. I'm experimenting with a fundamental law acting like a light system. I used a real physics experiment called the Double Slit experiment.

I have written 3 books. First book I am trying to publish.

Thank you

In a world where Breath runs through every living thing like electricity, six years underground can change what a man is.

Khalen descended through the buried layers of fallen worlds — six years in the dark, with dead civilizations — to chase an anomaly. He came back with a sentient ship, a 9,000-year-old skull named OH, and a new frequency running through his Breath channels. He also came back four years late — which is a different problem entirely.

The crew he assembles is small and strange: Ayame, the healer he loved and left without a word — who stopped waiting six months before he surfaced; and Liren, an archivist who reads history from surfaces with her bare palm, drawn to his Breath channels for reasons she can no longer remember. The frequency she's been tracking for six years belongs to his brother.

His brother made a bargain with an ancient intelligence and has been paying for it in pieces of himself ever since. He walks the Wildlands alone, guided by a blue crystal companion that communicates only in harmonic hums. He's heading toward the inverted pyramid that hangs in the upper atmosphere. He doesn't know Khalen is already moving.

The broken ring isn't a symbol. It's a prison that something has been conducting the faithful toward destroying for four hundred years. And what lives below the seal doesn't kill civilizations.

It replaces them.

The infiltration ran for generations before anyone noticed. By the time the world understood what was happening, you couldn't tell if you were looking at a friend or a stranger. The seal was the only answer left — an entire world buried to keep it shut.

Now the key has to be remade. Two brothers are moving toward the same lock from opposite ends of the world. Neither knows the other is already in motion.

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Looking for feedback in plot, characters etc. I really wanted the story to be character driven with no lore dumps. No stats or harem. Whatever you think needs attention so I can improve it.

There are 4 clearly defined arcs so even feedback for one arc would be greatly appreciated. 4 arcs around 25k words each.

Romance sub- plot.

The first three books are fully written. Publishing the first.

Thank you so much!