In the beating heart of Valtorea, where the Kaiser's divine mandate has ruled for centuries, an unsettling change stirs beneath the Empire's formidable hegemony. Here, in a land forged by faith and tempered through war, the old order stands on a precipice. A war unlike any other?one destined to reshape the fate of millions?looms on the horizon.
Lord-Marshal Kaelitz von Ardent, a scarred veteran and young man once hailed as a hero, now holds the Empire's highest military honor?a title granted not only for his deeds but also for his perceived loyalty. Yet he finds himself trapped. Once a rising star of the first war, his strength and cunning admired by his peers, he has been reduced to a pawn, bound to the Emperor's whims. His warnings go unheeded, his voice drowned by the will of a ruler he can no longer respect.
But beneath his growing disillusionment, Kaelitz senses a calling?a raw, almost primal pull toward the chaos of battle. Though disheartened by the Empire's stagnation, he feels himself drawn to the purity he once found in war: a purpose without pretense, a thrill in the clash of steel and survival, and a strange solace in the camaraderie of the front, and Kaelitz prepares to embrace this looming conflict not out of patriotism, but to rediscover himself in its brutal clarity. The battlefield, for all its horrors, has become his sanctuary?perhaps his only true calling left.
A new, dangerous era is about to begin in Wars of the Betrayer, an era forged in blood, gunpowder, and martyrdom.