Arclight Hollows: 6 Stories set in the World of LegendHaven itself, by LegendFiction Authors

LegendHaven is more than a con, it's a world, and these adventures bring it to life. Get it free as our gift to you when you buy a weekend pass to our convention!

This cluster of short stories does something we’ve never done before. LegendHaven started as a convention, but our storytellers always dreamed of it being a world. In 2025, we asked authors to craft adventures in it.

This collection takes this gorgeous, epic world, and explores it through the eyes of 6 unique characters:

• Nurim, an Excalibyrn-trained warrior with a secret bond to the Chalimancer school, who escapes the trials of one house with a friend to test his life and claim his future, by Dominic de Souza.

• Hidar is so convinced that the old stories carry truth and life that he accepts a death-defying challenge to follow ancient clues and prove them right, or die, by Jade Howell.

• Naia finally reaches LegendHaven, eager to share the stories of her people, when her amulet is lost, and with it all the memories of her stories, by Maria Pasquale.

• Vi’Jave is an enchanted warrior who ferrets out a dark plot to poison the wells, and chases the murderers into the desert to protect the innocents of Arclight Hollows, by Ringil

• Bujir works for a magician, and a grimoire reveals lost and secret incantations. He flees, but his master summons a flight of dune drakes to kill him and reclaim the book, by Carl Olson.

• Orbit is haunted by reality, and he sits in the market to share the lifeblood burning in his stories, even as his body fails him, he turns to new tools to enchant and enliven his hearers, by Gabi Batel.

With special concept art to inspire your imagination, each story explores a unique facet of this wild world, this frontier between kingdoms.

We hope you enjoy them, enjoy the world of LegendHaven, and enjoy how some of the coolest storytellers in the world welcome you to their worlds.

Pssst! Get this collection of stories free as our gift to you when you buy a weekend pass to our convention!

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About Arclight Hollows

The canyon rises like the broken ribs of a god, curved against the setting sun, shadowing a city of amber and violet. Roads bridge over stairs, built on the bones of older roads, older stairs, older ruins. The walls are maps drawn over maps, until truth blurs into myth.

This is a sacred city, a neutral oasis where violence is outlawed, and disputes are settled over storytelling and date wine.

Heat-slick banners hang low and heavy. Lanterns sparkle in the cool gloom. The storytellers and acolytes step through portals.

Some send aspects, and friends speak through bodies of shimmering glass, their minds tethered to palantirs hundreds of leagues away, eyes bright with the light of other skies.

Old friends meet and new voices babble like sudden rain.

The air tastes of cumin and barbecued meat; smells of spiced flatbread, sizzling fruits, and the resin of desert incense. The crowd is thick with cinnamon hearthsmoke. This is a hub on the edge of ten worlds, ten realms mingling in one festival. It’s been a hundred years since the last one, rumored to be near the tiled harbors, the blue coves of the far islands.

Beyond the gates, the desert waits.

Dunedrakes wing over the sands, deepwyrms turn under the earth in slow thunder. It’s said that Ribgate Crossing is the remains of an ancient great wyrm, so old that its marrow-places are now market places, its spine a string of pearly blue caves that cradle fresh water.

Maps over maps... banners divide secrets into rooftop societies, bonding over gulps of date wine and the shuffling rustle of traders unburdening their pack animals, palming ink-stamped messages from across the borders.

This city is older than the sands, from before the drakes and wyrms. The toothless wall-carvers grunt it is older than the gods. Who knows. The music comes from everywhere. Kite-drawn rafts with sails like giant birds careen in through mirages. Sandsleds and side-runners, nimble glassfin racers, even great trimarans with their spirit totems and leashed lantern crabs.

The desert is far from barren. Sandstorms routinely unearth layers of past roads, cities, and sunken civilizations.

Sometimes, travelers say that time pools differently in the lightning-sheared glass fields between canyons. Things simply... disappear for weeks. Or never return.

The bravest kite skimmers, manta-riders, or Windlancers (drake riders), riding the migratory wind rivers, say they can see giant cymatic patterns of ridges and sunken canyons. Everything means something, and the hooded, kite-riding teens and dream-dousing wanderers hunger to know.

The Lesser Scionate struggles to keep the peace. Everything is a single story away from chaos. In this bazaar of shade and murmuring arches, news and stories change hands like coin. It is here that the tournament of legends pits tale and tongue together, and after the Silent Hour, the whistling stadium crowds vote on the stories they love best.

Because stories are how souls survive.

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Meet the Authors

Dominic de Souza: A dad and novelist nuts about worldbuilding, helping friends find their freedom, and build a future we believe in. I’m a graduate from the Writer’s Institute for Children’s Literature, self-publish my novels because I’m impatient, serial entrepreneur because no one can stop me, and work full time in marketing and design. I am married, with a small girl and a smaller corgi. I write epic fiction for children and young adults, blog to sort my thoughts, and host podcasts to chat with cool people. LegendFiction is my passion. Website: dominicdesouza.com

Jade Howell: I love fantasy books especially Cinder and Howls moving castle. I have one story published by LegendFiction, it’s called The Trial’s of Morgana le Fay, published in Echoes of Avalon. I’m currently working on book one of a trilogy called Elven Secrets. I’ve also recently added a side project, a retelling of Alice in Wonderland. Website: jadehowell.substack.com

Maria Pasquale: A Catholic teen who has been writing for as long as she can remember. She loves all things J.R.R. Tolkien, C.S. Lewis, J. Austen, and L.M. Montgomery. If she isn’t buried in a book, you can find her playing violin, sewing, or wandering in the forest, on the search for an adventure. Her motto is, as said by St. Teresa of Avila, “Life is to live in such a way that we are not afraid to die.”

Ringil: I am totally a human teen and not an elf, and I am studying engineering and creative writing, and have a lot of ineffectual coding experience. I am currently working on writing a story called “Draconomicon of Shay” about a character named Shay who becomes a dragon. Also, I am not new, just a professional crastinator.

Carl Olson: I come from a family of late bloomers: married in my late 20’s, became a father in my late 30’s, then started a career as a 21st century librarian. My current work in progress is a two-part fantasy novel based on a sixty-page children’s story I wrote in the 1990’s. René Girard writes somewhere that one way or another, every first novel is about the author, and yes, it’s a YA novel with an elderly giant hero, with aches & pains familiar to aging tall persons. I have had three rejections so far, which I count as progress.

Gabriella Batel: I’m Gabriella Batel, author of heart-in-your-throat novels, including my acclaimed debut series, a collective total of 10 years in the works, Don’t, YA thrillers with a supernatural twist! I’m also an adrenaline-craving Catholic woman with a spunky love for God and my family, plus a fiery passion for acting, movies, running, music, and all things YA fiction. And, by the way, I’m already working on the next thrill ride…. Website: gabriellabatel.com

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