Lion

Before the fall of Jerusalem, there was Acre.

Godric Saint-Omer de Montfaucon is a knight of the Temple's elite Black Guard-a seasoned commander known among his brothers as the Black Lion. Disciplined, formidable, and fiercely self-reliant, he has built his life on skill, precision, and the certainty that he is equal to any trial set before him.

Then, in a single night, everything is taken.

Captured at the docks of Acre and cast into a brutal captivity far from the Order he once served, Godric is stripped of rank, of name-of everything that defined him. What remains is something harder. Something sharpened in silence, in suffering... and in violence.

When he escapes, he does not come back unchanged.

Blood has been spilled-and in its wake, a far greater threat begins to rise. One that will reach beyond the fractured kingdoms of the West and into the heart of the Caliphate itself.

Drawn east by forces he does not fully understand, Godric finds himself on a path he did not choose-one that will demand more than strength of arms or brilliance of mind.

Because for all his skill, for all his victories-he has never learned to surrender.

As powers gather and war looms on every horizon, Godric must face the one battle he has always avoided: the struggle between the man he has made himself to be... and the purpose that awaits him.

And before it is over, the Black Lion will be forced to become something more.