Black As Diamond – UM Agoawike (1)

On either side of him, the lit walking paths intersected thin waterways on which hybridized plants floated by. He hunched over a desk illuminated under the chill of a lamp powered, to his mild awe, by khetry-infused crystals of ice. Verillium, as one of the other journeyers had called it when he asked, was a new invention from Anticarta’s Court of Spares. Blinking blearily, Wren rubbed bloodshot eyes. Above him, a holographic screen scrolled through a list of glowing plants, same as at every other desk in the gardens.

He squinted at his empty hands. Where is the slide? In the microscope, he remembered. What was I doing again? He surveyed the desk covered in plant cuttings, medical swatches, the efforts of his labor, and various flasks of muddy tisanes. Right. He was failing to find a natural way to break the curse, on the slim hope that the speculative text he’d read about curses living off the blood of their creators held some strain of truth. It was an aimless quest.

Again: Curses couldn’t be broken, much less by natural methods. In the back of his mind, Wren had tried to convince himself Black Diamond was a sufficiently advanced programmed spell, knotted threads that a skilled lulaik could untangle. But a curse was a curse⁠—what had he expected? On his shoulders, stress had taken root. Dragging a hand through his half tail, Wren shoved the microscope aside with a groan. This used to be a common sight for him: working into the lean hours of morning by candlelight, sometimes with Rishé by his side.

He couldn’t remember the last time he’d had a good night’s sleep in his life. A light clicked, and the gardens darkened further as the last of the journeyers turned in for the night. Their footsteps faded, and he was alone. It was time. Wren had to snatch every chance he was given by the reins.

He pulled out the primer and flipped to the sketch of Rhenei’s theoretical spellwork, theories in which he was placing his entire faith. The steady drip of the irrigation system filled the quiet. Wren took a breath, then lifted his gift⁠—the bone shaped like a needle. He pressed it to the page, charged, and let the khetrical energy flow.

“Black as Diamond is haunting and ethereal, balanced with the warmth of found family. This is a cast of characters you are bound to fall in love with as they fumble their way toward one another, seeking connection in a world that is falling apart.” —⁠Andrea Stewart, Sunday Times bestselling author of The Bone Shard Daughter “U. M. Agoawike combines truly epic world building and breathtaking action to create a wholly original, harrowing dark fantasy. Black as Diamond is a gut punch of a debut novel.” —⁠Chelsea Abdullah, author of The Stardust Thief “With vivid prose, bone-rattling action, and a queer romance as tender as it is thunderous, Black as Diamond is a dark fantasy gem from the glittering heart of the genre.”

—⁠Sophia Slade, author of Nightstrider “This is the sort of fantasy I love. Layered, detailed world building, lush prose, lovable but flawed found family, and a central magical mystery tying it all together. Black as Diamond is a triumph!” —⁠M. H. Ayinde, author of A Song of Legends Lost “A wickedly original epic fantasy bound by the familiar threads of friendship, family, and fate.

Agoawike’s masterful worldbuilding is in rare balance with characters who shine bright within a world where nobody quite fits, and nothing is as it seems. Dark but boldly hopeful, Black as Diamond is fantasy at its most brilliant!” —⁠Fiona Fenn, author of The Crack at the Heart of Everything 1kitap1.com/en 1kitap1.com/en Published by Ezeekat Press, an imprint of Bindery Books, Inc., San Francisco www.binderybooks.com Copyright © 2026, U. M. Agoawike All rights reserved. Thank you for purchasing an authorized copy of this book and for complying with copyright laws.

No part of this book may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in articles and reviews, without express written permission of the publisher. NO AI TRAINING: Any use of this publication to “train” generative artificial intelligence (AI) technologies to generate text is expressly prohibited.

The author reserves all rights to license uses of this work for generative AI training and development of machine learning language models. Acquired by Jaysen Headley Edited and designed by Girl Friday Productions www.girlfridayproductions.com Cover illustration and hand lettering by Christian Chang ISBN (paperback): 978-1-967967-00-1 ISBN (ebook): 978-1-967967-01-8 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication data has been applied for. First edition This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously and not to be construed as real.

Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, organizations, events, or locales is entirely coincidental. 1kitap1.com/en For anyone terrified of living up to legacy, heritage, or expectation 1kitap1.com/en I IN THE ROUGH 1kitap1.com/en ASARU The bodies were fresh.

This is a short excerpt from the opening of “” by Unknown, quoted for review and introduction purposes. All rights belong to the copyright holders.

Book Information

• Unique ID: 09360c6e69040832
• File Extension: .pdf
• File Size: 13,235,891 bytes (12.623 MB)
• Title: –
• Author: Unknown
• ISBN: 9781967967001, 9781967967018
• Pages: 465
• Language: English (en)

Reading & Word Statistics

• Estimated Reading Time: 647.72 minutes
• Total Words: 129,543
• Total Characters: 741,576
• Average Words per Page: 278.59
• Average Characters per Page: 1594.79

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