Maliska - Ethan Gagnon

He was bred for this-grown inside a program that stopped calling it a weapon only when the paperwork required something gentler. Now he fights under a name he didn't choose, carries armor that isn't fully his, and hears a second voice in his own skull that gets louder every time the blade comes out.

When an ancient enemy crosses an ocean no living army has survived, Elias and the last of his order sail west to meet it-into a war that will cost them everything they think they've won: command, loyalty, the people they love, and the one promise Elias made to himself he'd keep no matter what the war demanded of him.

Some debts get paid in blood. This one gets paid in full.

For readers who want:

Morally complex war fantasy in the tradition of grimdark greats-no clean heroes, no easy victoriesA protagonist whose darkness is as dangerous to the people who love him as it is to his enemiesBrutal, earned battle sequences and a slow-burn tragedy that doesn't flinch from its own cost>Maliska is Book One of What They Spent-a story about what an order takes from the children it raises to fight for it, and what's left of a man once the war finally stops asking.

**Reader Discretion Is Advised**This book contains graphic violence, depictions of war and its psychological toll, and content some readers may find intense, including scenes involving harm to a minor character within the narrative's backstory.