Sacred Bell

"Bring to me your beloved dead. No matter the cause of death, whether they have been gone a day, a month...so long as there is flesh on the bones, they will live again."

actions will decide the future for all necromancers to come.

This story takes place in the North region of Fife during the early days of magic. This is a chaotic, almost lawless time as the people of Fife adjust to their magical new reality. People are both more and less open-minded than they were in what they call the Old Era,

Sacred Bell is the story of Keria, the first known necromancer* in Fife's history. This is the story of how she learns about her powers and, more importantly, what to do with those powers. Keria's

so while most magic users have begun to carve out their place in society, no one knows what to do with one strange young woman who can bring the dead back to life.

Lore

*Necromancers in Fife are called "Bellwethers", or "Bells" for short, in reference to the first necromancer, who became known as the "Sacred Bell".

Inspiration

When I began to consider necromancers in the world of Fife, I wanted to think of some way to differentiate them from typical fantasy necromancers. I wanted my necromancers to be a bit softer, rather than having the dark magic, evil wizard, mindless-armies-of-the-undead flavor of necromancy you normally see.

The inspiration for my necromancers came from Garth Nix's Old Kingdom series. These books do feature that more common flavor of necromancer, but they focus on the Abhorsens, who act as sort of an anti-necromancer, ensuring that the dead stay dead. The idea that death related magic didn't have to be evil served as my starting point, and from there I've worked to develop a form of necromancy that is unique to the world I've created.

As a bit of an easter egg, readers of the Old Kingdom series might be able to figure out how those books inspired the title of my novel.

Novel Stats

Genre: Fantasy

Status: Third draft

WordCount: 8599

as of 8/12/2025

Third Draft Goals

My main goal for draft 3 is for this to be the last structural draft. I'm trying to get all the details of Keria's life and journey fleshed out so that future drafts can focus on smaller details rather than continuing to work on big-picture stuff.

I'd also like to bring the overall word count down if possible, but at the same time I'm anticipating this as a five-volume work rather than a single novel, so whatever needs to be fleshed out is going to get fleshed out, regardless of word count concerns.

Listen to the Sacred Bell playlist on Spotify!

The songs on this playlist have inspired me during the writing of Sacred Bell. Each on in some way describes or embodies a character emotion, a particular moment of the story, or the overall mood of the novel.