Lantern Log #10 — The Broken Song

The road through the fractured realms is not over yet.

Work continues on The Broken Song, the second book in the Shadows and Strangers series. Although the journey has taken longer than originally expected, the path forward is becoming clearer with every chapter, and we still expect the story to arrive this year.

Where The Fractured Path introduced readers to the strange realities hidden beneath the world, The Broken Song begins pushing far deeper into them.

The story once again follows Maxen as the fractured realms continue to shift around him. But as the journey expands, so too does the understanding of what the realms truly are — and the hidden systems quietly shaping them from beneath the surface.

The roads become stranger.

The Veils grow thinner.

And the mysteries surrounding the Nexus, the Laws, and the deeper architecture of the world begin to move closer to the centre of the story.

While the first book focused heavily on discovery and survival, The Broken Song begins exploring consequence. The characters are no longer simply wandering through strange places — they are starting to realise they are connected to forces much larger and older than themselves.

Some truths cannot be unseen once discovered.

The second book will continue expanding the wider BADLVCK-Verse through new locations, deeper lore, unusual creatures, ancient systems, and increasingly unstable realities. Familiar companions return, new dangers emerge, and the fractured realms themselves begin to feel far less passive than they first appeared.

At its heart, however, the story still remains grounded in the journey of its characters — the quiet moments around fires, the strange companionships formed on impossible roads, and the growing feeling that the world itself may be trying to say something through its fractures.

The song has not fully broken yet.

But the echoes are beginning to spread.

— BADLVCK Press