Thrilling Sequel To 2025 Epic Fantasy Hit Drops Preview

EXCLUSIVE: The second installment in the hit Divine Thrall duology that took readers by storm last year is nearly here. The Divine Shadow is the highly anticipated sequel to Lyndsay Ely's The Lost Reliquary, and it releases on November 10 from Saga Press. But ScreenRant is here to present an exclusive first look at this duology's thrilling conclusion right now.

When it released in 2025, The Lost Reliquary captivated readers with a fresh, fast-paced fantasy that left them eager for the next installment. Book 1 introduced us to a ruthless world where the gods are dead – except one. Protagonist Lys is a sworn servant to the last living goddess in the Devoted Lands, and soon finds herself on a dangerous quest for an ancient, powerful artifact.

In The Divine Shadow, Lys' story continues as she wades through the wreckage of the latest divine conflict. If she doesn't finish her mission in time, it could mean an all-out war. But is she really ready to make a final stand? This book delivers the epic conclusion to the story that began in The Lost Reliquary, so readers will be able to experience the entire duology when it hits shelves. For now, you can check out the first chapter of The Divine Shadow as part of this exclusive preview.

Check Out The First Chapter of The Divine Shadow, Book 2 in the Divine Thrall Duology

​

I don’t know this light. In memory, it is a brighter, warmer sun that pours over skin that isn’t mine, honing kaleidoscopic fragrances carried upon a soft breeze. I search for the names of these scents, but they elude me. Same goes for the greenery, dew kissed and glistening, a rainbow of flowers blossoming within its branches. It’s a pleasant picture, this remembrance that isn’t mine, experienced gods know where, a thousand leagues away and borne across immeasurable stretches of land and sea. I hold it as long as I can before reality begins to gnaw again at its lacerated edges, rending it apart.

The Cathedral of the Enduring Flame is gone. Good riddance, except I sense its destruction like my own flesh and blood—fractured, scattered, spilled. That empty space where the structure used to stand is nothing but smoking ruins, which, if I had to guess, is still spitting up the occasional dead body or two. Fires continue to smolder beneath the worst of it, stubborn embers in the rubble that refuse to go out.

A little like me, I suppose.

The scale of destruction presses down on the secluded chamber where I sit quietly in the dark, entombed beneath what used to be one of the grandest structures in the Devoted Lands. For the hundredth time—or maybe the thousandth, who’s counting?—I press the point of one sickle to the pad of my thumb. A bead of blood wells up, round as the room, black as obsidian. I shouldn’t be able to see it at all. There are no oil lamps here, not a speck of illumination that reaches this deep in the earth, despite the fresh fissures in the stones above. And yet, here we are. The bead grows fat as an overfed tick and ruptures, drawing a dark line down to my palm. I lick it away. Salt. A faint metallic tanginess. Nothing new or unfamiliar. Not now, nor the countless times I’ve checked before. When I pull the digit back, the wound is gone, nothing left to show it was there, save for a faint sheen of tinted spit.

“Not sure what I expected.” I speak aloud, though I don’t need to, the statement flattened by the dense silence. “A little zip. A hint of spice. Something.”

No answer. Only the understanding. Of us.

Tempestra is napping.

It’s been days since Osiron’s attack, maybe a week. Time has taken on a weird texture, stretching like taffy before snapping back into place, rarely with the definition it should have. Oh, the jagged, shattered hours that followed my—our almost deaths are clear enough. Digging out from beneath the Cathedral, picking through the debris on a hunt for survivors, all the while sensing the fading glow of my Chosen—my brethren, beneath the devastation. The few left alive, anyway. It was an effective blow. Desperate and downright dirty, but effective. Gotta give Osiron that.

The Whisperer took their hits too, of course. The foul rankness of their followers’ remains still lingers in my nostrils, what was left of them deteriorated and barely identifiable following their consumption of a dead god’s blood in their effort to topple me.

No . . .

Topple the Flame.

Fuck. I do not love this feeling. This tangled, snake-pit sensation of being myself and not, someone else and not. Of you, Tempestra, buzzing around the peripheries of my mind. Not that I really knew what to expect when I let you wriggle in. I suppose I should be thankful you held to your promise not to slurp my consciousness down like an oyster from its shell, though I don’t know if it’s better or worse that you’ve receded to lick the divine wounds left after you healed my physical ones. Especially since I can’t quite shake the feeling of your breath against my neck, your shadow brushing across mine. Or the visions that keep rising to the surface, some other avatar’s stolen memories that you’ve kept like tacky little trinkets, entertaining as they are.

Worst of all is the awareness of that new thing, out there somewhere, clothed in its stolen body. Faint but constant, a threat and a taunt and an ache I cannot quiet. That’s a little bit of both of us, though, the desire to hunt down the still-fragile creature Osiron midwifed into this world. I keep wondering if the Whisperer regrets their strange gamble now. You and I’d both be dead as dead can be if the Whisperer had remembered an old lesson instead of trying to learn a new one: Never turn your back on a foe, no matter how defeated they seem.

Isn’t that right, Tempestra?

No answer.

I’ve grown accustomed to not getting one, outside of the occasional understanding of something I had little knowledge of before. A broadening of my mind, as if I opened a door at the back of a tiny library only to find a thousand more like it, every shelf filled to overflowing with tomes. To think all of it might have disappeared with Tempestra’s demise, which, until recently, was what I’d wanted more than anything. A wish that would have been fulfilled—at the acceptable price of my own expiration—if not for Osiron’s posturing miscalculation.

If not for Nolan.

I wanted to go after him immediately. Tried to. We were only hours behind, and Osiron didn’t exactly escape unscathed. Between our conflict and the summoning of a new deity, the Whisperer’s power had been heavily spent. They were weak. Vulnerable.

The problem was so were we.

Another confrontation so soon is . . . ill-advised. All the explanation I got. A feeble position for the supposedly most powerful being in existence to take, but then again, the only reason that being still managed the in existence part was me. My upgrade to divine avatar brought a fresh surge of power, but apparently it was short-lived. So: Rest. Recover. Rescue who could be rescued from the remains of the Cathedral and then . . .

Three knocks sound.

I ignore them, as I have a dozen times before. They’re barely audible to begin with, a faint series of thumps beyond the thick door of the underground chamber where a goddess once invited two of their Chosen to show off a crucial, closely held secret. What remains of that secret, the reliquary that I—that they’d kept hidden all these years, still sits on a pillar at the center of the room, its singular piece of decor. I’ve thought about smashing it about as many times as I’ve pricked my finger. What it contains is considered by most to be a gift rather than a curse—me, being part of the minority—but it’s an unwelcome reminder. Of what was forced upon me. Of not being cautious enough to ensure the rest had been destroyed, or realizing that the Whisperer still lived and, because of that deception, Osiron—weak, wiggling, manipulative creature that they are and always have been—was able to—

Nope. Not following that path of thought again, Tempestra. That’s yours, not mine.

I am Lys, and I intend to stay that way.

The knocks come again. And again.

“Shit . . .” They aren’t going to go away this time.

Seclusion was our little compromise. A near frenzy followed the destruction of the Cathedral, the people of the city of Lumeris frantic to understand what had happened, who had been behind the attack, what the Goddess (in their fresh, new flesh) was going to do, and on and on and on and on . . .

No, thanks. If we couldn’t go after Osiron and Nolan, if we absolutely needed time to restore ourselves, I wasn’t about to do it amid all that nonsense. Especially on my mostly lonesome. Should have known there’s no hiding away forever, though. Our devoted are coming—yet another thing my newly divine senses kept flagging. Countless pilgrims are descending like locusts on Lumeris, the city filling more and more as the days pass. Facing that gathering horde was always an inevitability.

Not to mention, I’m beginning to get hungry.

Can’t lie, that’s a bit of a rub. I know—the way I know too many new things—that my body doesn’t need food and water in the same way it did when I was sans Goddess, but it’s still a body of flesh and blood and bile and piss. It still requires some tending. A heartier plant than before, maybe, but subject to certain bounds of its nature, as all things are. I push myself up from the floor, frame aching with the reminder that I haven’t moved in what—a day? Two? The door lies directly across from me. There’s no handle or keyhole. Only me. I make my way over, hesitating right before I touch the iron-studded wood.

Ugh. There’s a whole gaggle of Chosen on the other side of it. Who I’d much prefer to go on ignoring, but before I can lock in that decision, the part of me that’s not me lays our palm on the door. A clunking noise follows, and it opens.

Really, Mother?

Fine. I’ll see what they want.

After all my time in the pitch-black, the brightness of their oil lamps should have blinded me, even briefly. Instead, I discover a crystal-clear tableau of what currently makes up the senior leadership of the Flame Goddess’s Orders.

To call them dregs would be rude. Probably not rude enough to make them fuck off, though.

So many of my Chosen—dammit, my brethren—were killed in Osiron’s attack. Enough that I didn’t bother overseeing their funerary preparations before we “excused” ourselves. They weren’t the only losses either. Over the past few days a feeling has come from time to time, the sensation of a candle being blown out somewhere far away. I do not know names, cannot picture faces, but we feel them nonetheless.

You’ve felt most of them, haven’t you, Tempestra? The deaths of your Chosen, even the ones shuffled away and abandoned in some forgotten corner of your lands. And yet, I’ve watched you cry over their bodies. Does that affection only carry to the city limits, or do you consider a certain amount of attrition by murder the cost of doing divine business?

And what the hell do the ones in front of us want now?

Five nervous figures wait for me to give them permission to speak. Their features sway between a mélange of emotions, awe and fear and— worst of all—love. They are not the cream of the crop, but they’re what’s left: Rallo, my new High Arbiter, fully white-eyed and ancient enough to be panting from the trip down here; Prior Superior Krestor, scruffy in a way that makes me think of a hound dog; High Cleric of the Blood Emmeric, fervor pouring from him in the most irritating way possible; my new Bellator Prime, Ysell, appropriately stoic but an odd duck among her Order, the only one without command of a legion.

And last but not least, my handpicked, brand-spanking-new Executrix.

Morgan probably doesn’t realize how she winces slightly upon seeing me, her eyes tightening as she stares at her old rival turned Goddess. But, oh, I catch it, that faint reaction to the flesh she’d known our whole lives (Innara) now suddenly become Lys, whom she’s hated more or less from our first day together in the Dawn Cloister. I keep my expression blank especially for her, as tranquil as a goddess should be. Tempestra might be mostly tucked away catching their breath, but what fun is it if Morgan knows that?

“What do you need?” Benevolent entity that I’m supposed to be, I opt for a gentle approach, speaking in the way I remember Tempestra- Innara addressing us: quiet, calm, cool. All light, no fire. “I did not wish to be disturbed.”

Despite my effort, they all wince a bit at that.

Except Bellator Ysell. She steps forward, dipping her head respectfully. “We are sorry to disturb you, Goddess. But crowds have continued to gather outside the wall of the Cathedral complex, and they are becoming . . . unsettled.” When I don’t press for an explanation, she continues awkwardly. “There are . . . rumors circulating.”

“Distressing ones,” Prior Superior Krestor jumps in, spitting a little in his excitement to contribute. “Foul notions, about the extinguishing of the Flame, the return of the dead gods, of… of the…”

“Of the Whisperer,” I finish. The divine power in me surges briefly, angry at the threat that shouldn’t be a threat. At the god who was supposed to be dead.

Calm down there, Tempestra.

“Our clerics are working hard to quell the gossip,” offers High Cleric of the Blood Emmeric, “as well as reassure the devoted that their Goddess not only lives, but thrives in their newly appointed avatar. That the Flame burns as brightly as ever.”

A gross overstatement, if we’re being honest. But I nod, understanding, because none of them would be here right now if the tales being spun by the clerics were being swallowed. I know what they are asking of me.

Of us.

Might as well get it over with.

They part as I move forward, taking the lead of our little party as we traverse the tunnels that coil beneath the Cathedral complex. These remained mostly untouched by the destruction above, though I observe cracks that weren’t there before, fresh weaknesses in the stone and mortar. Our path is indirect, winding through the safest passages and up into what halls still stand before reaching open air. Once there, a field of shattered glass and crumbled stone spreads out before us.

Regret and sorrow suddenly fill me, not all of it Tempestra’s. I hated the Cathedral, its stuffy eaves and buttresses and the stupid, spindly tower above it, where a flame once burned day and night as a beacon to pilgrims. It was, for me, a structural reminder of my divine cage—a place where I was victim, murderer, and then victim again. But it was beautiful too. The hands of a thousand artisans had touched it over the centuries, driven by deep devotion. A face stares up from the debris: the remains of one of the countless statues of past Chosen that once lined the Cathedral’s corridors. Positioned as it is, the features on the broken head appear imploring, but also blank. Cold. And too reminiscent of the other faces that looked out of the rubble. I wave a hand. The nose crumbles; the eyes and lips disappear, as if sanded away. I don’t check to see if my Chosen have noticed my little trick, but I feel at least one pair of eyes piercing my back.

Avatar or Lys, it’s hard to ignore Morgan’s stare.

But that sensation fades beneath another that’s growing stronger with each passing moment, the very reason I opted to hide us in the reliquary chamber, when leadership was the expected course. The Cathedral is destroyed. A dead god has returned. Obviously the Flame’s followers are more than a little concerned. I feel their fears radiating, thickening the air as I pick my way through gardens and across the plazas, until we reach the great gate that marks the boundary between the Cathedral complex and the decadent, sprawling city of Lumeris below. The doors survived, though I can see why my senior advisors are getting antsy about that being a continuing condition.

The crowds have come. Countless thousands fill every open space as people press to get closer, attempting to see the travesty that has occurred with their own eyes. This ocean of individuals floods the city streets, flowing out of view like tributary rivers. Despite their number, the gathered are mostly silent, clutching their reveries— pendant-sized representations of the Flame rendered in crystal or gold or even plain wood—emitting only a low buzz of what might be prayer, but also might be questions and gossip that tread dangerously close to blasphemy.

That all disappears the moment we step into view. A shocked hush falls, short-lived as a swell of sound rises on its heels, turning quickly to a roar—cries of excitement and relief and the ecstasy of the Goddess’s reappearance. A rare treat: For the majority of living memory, the Flame has taken its audiences within the Cathedral, displayed only to a lucky few. Now, that stingy tradition is set aside in favor of some desperately needed proof of life. It’s almost overwhelming, the sheer sense of them all. Their confusion and uncertainty pours over and through me, infused with apprehension, desire, and . . .

I see the Arbiters. A trio, set apart from the crowd, still as marble pillars in their cold white cassocks. To one side of them a mixture of Cathedral and city guards are stationed—practically toylike in armor that has, until very recently, been mostly ceremonial—surrounding a cluster of figures on their knees, chained to one another. All are slumped forward and looking . . . well, not much better than what’s been dragged out from beneath the Cathedral ruins. The pungent tang of congealed blood and emptied bladders reaches me.

There’s that breath on my neck again. I turn to Morgan. “Were you going to mention this? Or is a bunch of beat-to-hell strangers the traditional ‘welcome to godhood’ gift?”

“Heretics,” my Executrix spits, failing to round the curtness off the word. Which she must realize, given the embarrassed flush that touches her cheeks. “While you’ve been . . . communing, we’ve been combing the city, searching for any traitors operating in secret.” How industrious of my new senior Chosen.

Rallo hobbles over. “They have yet to be judged, Goddess, but the evidence is unquestionable. They are guilty and thus deserving of whatever punishment you deem appropriate.”

I’m almost impressed by how my Chosen have blindsided me. Not that they’d see it that way. No, excluding Morgan and Ysell, they look as pleased as cats who have dumped a chewed-up mouse at my feet. An offering to their new avatar, their rekindled Flame.

Their doting fucking blood mother.

The bitter laugh that wells in my throat nearly escapes. Whatever punishment that I “deem appropriate.” Any twisted, horrible, cruel sentence I’m in the mood for, so long as it serves to make an example of these unlucky folks. I might have them thrown into some moldy, window less, and vermin-filled prison to slowly rot. Or instruct Morgan to carve their innards from them, piece by piece, one victim at a time. But those choices, while fitting, would not offer the satisfaction desired by my devoted audience. As thousands of eyes stare, expectant and eager, I can’t pretend I don’t understand exactly what is being asked of me.

These prisoners are heretics.

I am the Flame.

And the punishment for heresy is to burn.

Excerpted from THE DIVINE SHADOW by Lyndsay Ely. Copyright © 2026. Reprinted by permission of Saga Press at Simon & Schuster, Inc. All rights reserved.​