The Rising World Books in Order

The Rising World is a secondary world fantasy series that begins with a murder and a betrayal already long in the past. Its protagonist, Kai, is a demon and sometime Witch King who wakes from magical imprisonment to find that someone has broken the fragile peace he and his allies once fought to create.

Witch King alternates between two timelines. In the present, Kai and the witch Ziede pick through ruined fortresses, suspicious city states, and shifting alliances to learn who trapped them and why. In the past, chapters show the earlier revolution against the immortal Hierarchs, when Kai, Ziede, and their coterie pulled down a brutal empire at immense personal cost.

Queen Demon pushes further into the aftermath. A beloved member of Kai's circle believes he has found clues to the location of the Hierarchs' Well, a source of immense power that should have been safely out of reach. Kai, Ziede, and Tahren travel with him to the rebuilt university city of Ancartre, where scholars and politicians may be edging far too close to repeating the mistakes of the past.

Instead of centering royal heirs or prophesied heroes, the series follows people who already survived one world ending struggle and now have to live with its consequences. It explores questions of trust, the temptations of centralized power, and what it means to build new institutions that do not simply mirror the old ones.

Readers who enjoy Wells's intricate cultures, nonhuman protagonists, and focus on found families will recognize those strengths here, wrapped in a story of slow burned mysteries, magical conspiracies, and stubborn attempts to keep a damaged world from breaking again.