My name is Elivah Sadalin. For the past years of my life, I’ve specialized in the Amric Sundering Era. Specifically, I’ve dedicated my career to studying one person: Yaffah, the Sword Saint.

  If you’re picking up this book, you probably already know who she was, no? She was the woman who ended the Sundering War. The woman who saved this country. Our greatest hero!

  Pardon me—I get a bit enthusiastic when I talk about her.

  She’s my hero and the reason I became a historian. I wrote my thesis about her military innovations. I’ve published three papers on her origin and legacy. That allowed me to present at conferences where scholars twice my age and more experienced than I were in the audience.

  But I thought I knew everything about the Sword Saint. Her allies, her sacrifices, even the way she took her tea (without sugar, if you’re curious. There’s a fascinating reference in her adjutant's journal).

  Look, I’m telling you this not to brag—though I admit I’m proud of my work—but so you understand what happened next.

  Six months ago, we discovered Yaffah’s personal journal in a private collection. Whilst reading it, I found an unsent letter glued between the pages.

  In it, she wrote to someone I’d never heard of. Someone who’d apparently worked with her and was crucial in ending the war. She called him the Black Lion.

  And the way she wrote to him—I need you to understand this, because it’s important. Yaffah’s official correspondence is brilliant but cold. Those letters, all formal, showed impressive qualities for someone of her standing. That’s the person I knew from four years of research: respected, admired, but never warm.

  This letter was different. I must have read that letter fifty times, and each time it hit harder.

  The sadness, the longing … I knew Yaffah had lost comrades, friends, even family. But I wasn’t expecting this—the kind of loss that makes victory feel hollow.

  I won’t lie to you—I was jealous. Deeply, wildly, jealous. Jealous of a man from two centuries ago.

  Who was he? What was their relationship? And why had I never heard his name?

  That’s when I realized: I hadn’t just not heard of him. He didn’t exist anywhere. No history books, military records, or mentions in any archive I’d cataloged in the last four years of research.

  Someone had erased him. Completely.

  That erasure is why you’re reading this book now.

  Let me walk you through what I found, because the process matters. You need to understand how thoroughly this person was removed from history, and how many assumptions I had to challenge to find him.

  The title “Black Lion” meant nothing to me at first. I even thought it sounded a bit silly. I’d cataloged thousands of names, military ranks, honors, and positions within the war. I could name every important figure from every faction, and yet somehow, I missed this.

  A case of literary theft: this tale is not rightfully on Amazon; if you see it, report the violation.

  It took weeks before I found the answer in an Aryeh Empire document from before the Centurial Strife. Black Lion: the formal title for the Lion Guard General of the Black Legion.

  This is the kind of rank that should appear in every history book, but this time, it did not.

  Want to know how many times I’d looked at Aryeh’s sources in four years of research?

  Zero.

  Why would I? The Aryeh Empire was our enemy for generations—not in some distant, abstract way, mind you. We learned about the empire’s atrocities in school. Their invasion. The occupation.

  So, no, it never occurred to me to dig into Aryeh military records when I was studying Amram’sgreatest hero.

  Anyway, once I started looking properly, a friend sent me a cadet roster from the Simur Academy of War, dated 1717 A.N. One name was redacted. Just one. I cross-referenced academy archives, family records, and admission documents. I got access to some old journals from those cadets, and they talked about a foreign boy called Mordekhai.

  A cadet of Aryeh descent, adopted by the prestigious House Aydin, arriving at Amram shortly after the Centurial Strife ended. Training at Simur in the mid-1710s, just before the Seriel Conflict began.

  Then I found it. A partially burned adoption record, misfiled in property documents.

  Mordekhai ven Aydin.

  I doubt that was his birth name, but after checking everything again, it matches. How he came to bear the title Black Lion, I’m still trying to work out—but that name connects him to the timeline, the erasure, and to Yaffah herself.

  Beyond that single surviving document, his name was removed from everything official. But people remembered him anyway. The letters and personal journals I was given portray an outsider who earned respect and, eventually, loyalty in a time when the two nations were anything but friendly.

  So here’s what you need to know before you start reading.

  This book is my attempt to reconstruct what actually happened. To tell the story of a man who apparently helped reshape Amram, only to be deliberately erased from its history.

  What you’re about to read is not a traditional historical narrative written in my voice. Instead, I’ve reconstructed events through the sources themselves—letters, journals, testimony fragments, military records. I’ve arranged them chronologically and filled gaps only when historical evidence strongly suggests what occurred.

  The story begins at the Simur Academy of War in 1717, which is the earliest surviving account I’ve been able to reconstruct. I suspect his story doesn’t end where this book does. I’m already finding traces of him in later events—gaps in the historical record that suddenly make sense when you know someone’s missing from them.

  I won’t tell you whether Mordekhai ven Aydin was a hero or a traitor. You’ll have to decide that for yourself based on what you read.

  But I will tell you this: Yaffah—the Sword Saint, the woman who saved Amram, our greatest historical figure—trusted him, missed him, and wrote to him with a warmth she showed no one else in any document I’ve ever found.

  That means something.

  Someone went to extraordinary lengths to erase this man from history. Someone wanted us to believe Yaffah ended the Sundering War alone. They curated our textbooks, our archives, our national narrative. They did it so well that I—I never questioned it until I found that letter.

  Now I’m questioning everything.

  And after you follow his journey, I think you will too.

  But first, you need to know who Mordekhai ven Aydin was. How an Aryeh boy became the Black Lion. How he ended up fighting beside the Sword Saint. And why, two centuries later, we were never supposed to know his name.

  I’m going to show you what I found.

  Elivah Sadalin

  Historian, Lurasha Historiographic Institute

  Specialist in the Sundering War period

  16th of Zelat, 1930 A.N.

  Lurasha, Amram