The Golden Steps

Tha'vok has spent his entire life preparing for the Ten Days-the trial that decides whether a child belongs among the Wolves.

He fails.

Cast out by the only people he has ever known, ten-year-old Tha'vok leaves the Frosthorns with empty hands, a stubborn wolf cub at his side, and no place left to call home.

Then he meets Slinger.

The aging wizard sees something in the undersized barbarian that his clan never did. Tha'vok may never be the strongest warrior in the room-but he watches. He questions. He learns. And over the years that follow, Slinger teaches him that strength can take forms his people have forgotten.

Their travels carry Tha'vok across Korveth, through strange cities, ancient ruins, old rivalries, and the scars of wars that never truly ended. Along the way, he begins to uncover fragments of a forgotten history-one that suggests the barbarian tribes were once something greater than the divided people they have become.

Now old hatreds are stirring. Someone is pushing the tribes toward war, and the dead themselves are beginning to disappear.

To stop what is coming, Tha'vok will have to return to the people who cast him out and face a challenge no axe can solve.

Because the Wolves taught him that strength decides who survives.

Slinger taught him something harder.

The strongest answer is not always the one that hits hardest.

The Golden Steps is the first book in The Wolf King Trilogy, an epic fantasy saga of exile, brotherhood, ancient secrets, dangerous magic, and a barbarian who must learn to win by thought.