Author's Note
If you've made it this far, you've survived Thor's first two years at Central North — the Brotherhood, the Latin Kings, a dying Nazi's grimoire, and one very bad decision involving a pregnant woman and an anonymous tip to Crimestoppers. Thanks for sticking with him. He needed the company.
RuneSlinger started as a question I couldn't shake: what happens when the most dangerous place in the world to be vulnerable is also the only place where you're forced to figure out who you actually are? Prison strips everything away. No performance, no escape, no carefully curated version of yourself. Just concrete and fluorescent lights and the guy six inches away on the other bunk who may or may not be trying to kill you. I wanted to put a magic system inside that pressure and see what came out.
What came out was Thor. A twenty-two year old kid from Parkdale who got in a car with the wrong person, inherited power from the worst possible teacher, and — against all reasonable odds — decided to use it to be something other than a weapon.
The Kraus Inheritance is Book 1 of eight. Four books at Central North, four at Millhaven Maximum Security, where the magical stakes get considerably higher and considerably stranger. Think of CNCC as Thor's apprenticeship. He learned what he was and what he wouldn't do.
Book 2, Blood Sigils, is already complete. Thor's education continues — except this time the teacher is trying to kill him, the Latin Kings have found a new angle, and a formal magical duel is coming that will test whether those six principles he scratched into a Kierkegaard book actually hold under real pressure. Spoiler: they do. The cost, though, is something else.
By the time the series ends, Thor will have faced seven magical factions, lost people he can't afford to lose, built something in the space between worlds that travels with him wherever he goes, and answered the question that's been underneath all of it since Chapter 1: can you come out of a place designed to break you and still be recognizably yourself?
I think you already know where I land on that. But it's a long road to Millhaven, and we're just getting started.
See you in Blood Sigils.
— Julian Grant
