The Empyrean - Blog Posts

Something that is so tragic about Iron Flame is Tairn and Sgaeyl’s relationship. And though I am sad for Sgaeyl after Xaden became venin, I am devastated for Tairn.

He valued his mating bond with Sgaeyl more than she did.

Tairn kept Xaden’s secret from Violet in Fourth Wing, about Aretia and the venin and the rebellion. He kept it for Sgaeyl. He told Violet that the only bond more sacred than a dragon and its rider was a dragon and its mate.

But Sgaeyl kept Xaden’s secret about his second signet from Tairn.

I’m not saying Sgaeyl values Xaden more than Tairn, or that Tairn loves Sgaeyl more than she loves him (if dragons love?), but if that isn’t the worst betrayal of the series so far, I don’t know what is.

Hi I literally have such existential dread about my fanfic like I had such high hopes it would be well received and loved and supported and it’s not so does that make me fake for craving love instead of being content honing the craft??? Yeah I’m a poser lol the spiraling is real

I hope one day we get to see a Tairn and Andarna conversation without Violet 🫶🏻

I also love the idea of 20 year old Lilith, full of justice and free of spirit, coming into her power and ready to level the playing field— to liberate Navarre from the venin threat. Is she read in to the secret before her peers? Does her signet give her top secret clearance? The hopes for her future are high. Yes the stakes are real, but she is the balance.

Only to end in tragedy when she realizes before her 21st birthday that she’s nothing— nothing compared to the strength of Theophanie.

Every time she wields, she hears the taunts of the venin Sage, telling her she’s not good enough. Every accomplishment in the Navarre army— empty. Hollow.

Each of her children’s births— swallowing the all-consuming fear that she couldn’t protect them if Theophanie came knocking.

The weight is crushing, actually. Oh, it hurts.

“She’s their answer to my mother.” — “She was the answer to me,” Theophanie hisses, and the clouds start to swirl.

“Your mother knew at your age that she was no match for me. That’s why she hid behind those wards. Perhaps you should have followed her example.”

I'm sorry, all I got from this was that those two were in a cat-and-mouse game for 30+ years, which could mean nothing...

What is the purpose of Brennan using the alias of Lieutenant Colonel Aisereigh? Who all knows exactly who he is? Because these rebellion kids from the battle at Resson don’t seem surprised he’s Brennan Sorrengail. Did ALL the rebellion kids at Basgiath know her brother was alive?

Is it just me? (Onyx Storm - no spoilers)

I’m seeing so many Onyx Storm reviews the past few days where people talk about how confusing and scatterbrained the writing was and I didn’t feel like it was at all? Like there were parts that I was a bit confused because we’re supposed to be along with Violet, but it wasn’t to the point where I felt like I understood nothing and nothing made sense.

Then I was thinking, maybe it’s because I’m adhd and it’s just written and paced in a way that works for my neurospicy brain😅

I know Rebecca Yarros is adhd too, so maybe it’s something to that? But also, this was the third book in a five book series. If we got all the answers in this one that would just not make sense?

Everyone’s different, and every experience is valid, I’ve just been seeing a lot of this late and couldn’t relate at all😅

Onyx Storm-first read (no spoilers)

Holy shit, what a wild ride.

I finished Onyx Storm literally like 30 minutes ago and I can’t even. So much happened, some things I expected and some surprised me, but man was it a good read.

I had to sit and stare at nothing for a while after I read the last page. I don’t know what to do with myself now that I’ve been in a vacuum in this world for the past couple of days😅

How are we feeling about Onyx Storm? Did you enjoy it? Were you disappointed? Let me know.

I personally loved it!

Every time Violet says full disclosure I get so angry😂

Seen a bunch of this recently where people complain about the amount of romance in the empyrean series (fourth wing) and I’m like… it’s a romance fantasy?

Like it’s marketed as romantasy is it not? Idk. I just always got the impression that it’s a romance book in a fantasy setting even before I read it, so I was going in expecting all the romance🤷🏻‍♀️

What would Violet's group (Sawyer, Liam, Rhiannon and Ridoc) majors be if they where in Uni?

For fanfic writing purposes

A snippet/summary of that happens in the other one shots.

It had started with tea. She brought it to him every night, supposedly it

helped with sleep. Then it was quiet conversations. A small joke passed

between midnight hours. Her leaning her head on his shoulder once

when he sat down long enough to actually drink the damn tea.

It was nothing. Until it wasn’t.

Until she touched his hand, and he realized he hadn’t been touched—

really touched—in years, six to be exact and now he knew how starved

he was.

Until she reached for him without flinching, even when he was a little

sharp, a little too tired, a little too much.

Until he kissed her. Soft. Barely-there. Half-asleep in the corner of one of

the corridors of the Riorson house, paper clutched in one hand, her

fingers threaded in his hair.

“You need rest,” she murmured against his mouth.

“I need you,” he whispered back.

And she stayed, she had stayed. Even when his walls cracked open wide

enough to reveal everything.

The Quiet Between Battles

A Brennan Sorrengail x Reader One-Shot

The war was coming faster than any of them had planned. That was the problem with battle—no matter how many strategies you poured over, no matter how many sleepless nights you carved into your soul—it came anyway.

Brennan Sorrengail hadn’t slept in… gods, how long had it been? Three days? Four?

His rank—Lieutenant Colonel—still felt like a cruel joke every time someone said it aloud. He had earned it through death. Not valor. Not time. Just... survival. And the empty spaces left behind by people who hadn’t - by living through the battles that had claimed the lives of others, the ones who had fought beside him and never returned.

He was reading reports by candlelight again. The air in the room was still, heavy with parchment and ink and guilt.

And then she appeared. Again.

“Gods, sorry,” she said, breathless, clutching a satchel against her hip.

“Didn’t think anyone else would be out here this late.”

That was the third time this week.

She was a healer, technically. But she’d been raised in a fight ring and taught to defend with as much precision as she could mend. People said she could read a man better than she could stitch one up—and Brennan was starting to believe it.

Because she always showed up just before he shattered.

--Three weeks ago

The room was thick with the smell of ink, dust, and burnt candle wax.

Brennan Sorrengail sat hunched over the map-strewn table, his brow furrowed in concentration as he studied the battle reports laid out before him. His eyes, bloodshot and hollow from days of sleeplessness, scanned the documents again and again, seeking answers that refused to materialize.

He hadn’t slept in days; time didn’t matter anymore.

The maps before him were a tangled mess of ink and fear, with red markings indicating enemy positions and blue dots representing the rebellion own forces. He traced his finger over the lines, eyes darting between locations, calculating, recalculating, but the fatigue clouded his mind. The weight of everything was too much for one person to bear, yet here he was, trying to carry it all.

A quiet noise at the door made him pause. The soft shuffle of footsteps, deliberate but unhurried, caught his attention, though he didn’t immediately look up. His mind was too deep in the strategy to bother with interruptions. Yet the presence lingered—an unfamiliar weight in the room.

Then, the door creaked open.

Brennan’s hand froze over the map as a woman stepped into the room.

She wasn’t one of his officers. She wasn’t someone from his command.

He didn’t recognize her, and she wasn’t wearing the standard uniform of a soldier. Instead, she wore a simple tunic, with a worn leather belt and a satchel hanging from her hip. Her hair, dark and tangled, was pulled back in a messy braid. But what struck him the most was the look in her eyes—sharp, watchful, as if she were sizing him up without a word.

“Sorry,” she said, her voice calm, almost too calm. “Didn’t realize someone else would be in here this late.”

Brennan blinked; his first instinct was to send her away. He didn’t need interruptions, especially not now. But something about her presence—a strange quiet that wasn’t afraid to fill the space—made him pause.

He didn’t know why her arrival felt almost… inevitable. The room had been so empty, so suffocating, until she appeared.

He looked up at her then, his voice hoarse from lack of use.

“What do you want?”

The woman hesitated for only a fraction of a second before she stepped farther into the room, closing the door behind her with a soft click. There was no hesitation in her movements, no nervousness. She moved with a quiet purpose, like someone used to taking control of whatever situation they found themselves in.

“I’m not sure what I want,” she said, her lips quirking up slightly as if she found the question amusing. “But I know I’m not going to leave you alone in here until you rest.”

Brennan’s brow furrowed, his eyes narrowing in suspicion. “I don’t need help.”

Her gaze softened, but there was no pity in it, only something else— something knowing, something he couldn’t quite place- why was she there?

“I’m not here to help. I’m just here to make sure you don’t collapse on top of all these maps...”

For a moment, he was taken aback. This wasn’t an officer or a soldier. It was just a woman—one he had never talked before. And yet, there she was, completely unbothered by his presence, as if she had every right to be here.

He didn’t reply right away, his lips pressing into a thin line as he stared at her. She wasn’t some messenger. She wasn’t here to report to him or give him new information. She was just… there.

“I can’t rest,” he said finally, the words tasting like failure as they left his mouth. “There’s too much at stake.”

“Yeah,” she said with a shrug, moving toward a chair by the window and setting down with an almost deliberate slowness. “There always is. But you’re not doing anyone any good if you’re running on empty. You know that, right?” She chuckles

Brennan didn’t respond immediately, his gaze flickering back to the papers in front of him. The room had gone silent again, but it wasn’t a comfortable silence. It felt like an intrusion, a breach of some invisible barrier he’d made around himself.

He didn’t know who this woman was, but he could feel her eyes on him, watching, waiting for him to acknowledge her presence. And for some reason, he couldn’t push her away, he couldn’t not do so. There was something about her steady gaze that made him want to hide all the cracks in his armor, but he didn’t know how to. Not anymore.

“I’ve got a war to help to win,” he muttered, his voice barely above a whisper, as though speaking it aloud might make it more real than it already was. Why did he feel he could just pore everything else? She had just walked into his life and somehow it seemed she had always been there.

She chuckled lightly, though it wasn’t mocking—more like she understood the weight of it.

“And you think it’s going to be won by one man with a desk full of maps?” she asked, her voice smooth, but with an edge of disbelief. “Come on. It’s not just on you.”

Her words were a small crack in the wall he’d built around himself, and the unspoken truth of them made him bristle, even as they sunk in. He hadn’t realized how much he’d been carrying until just now, with this stranger, in this quiet room.

He looked at her, really looked at her for the first time, noticing the way her eyes held his without flinching, the way her posture didn’t break under his stare. She wasn’t intimidated. She wasn’t afraid. And somehow, that felt like the weight he didn’t know how to carry was being taken by her.

“I don’t need anyone to tell me what to do,” he said, his tone defensive, though he didn’t have the energy to be as harsh as he wanted to be.

Her expression softened, and for the briefest moment, he thought he saw something like sympathy flicker in her gaze—but it was gone just as quickly.

“Then don’t let me tell you what to do,” she said, standing up and crossing toward him. She reached out, her hand hovering for a moment over the pile of reports on his desk. “Just take a damn break, Colonel. Or you’ll end up with nothing left to fight for.”

For a moment, Brennan didn’t move. He didn’t know what to do with her words, didn’t know how to handle the simple honesty in her voice. But before he could respond, she turned and made her way toward the door, pausing with her hand on the handle.

“I’ll be back tomorrow,” she said over her shoulder, her tone unexpectedly gentle. “You can keep pretending you don’t need sleep. But I’m still here. Whether you want me to be or not.”

And with that, she was gone.

Brennan sat in the silence she left behind, staring at the door, feeling something inside of him stir—something long buried, something he didn’t know how to deal with.

For the first time in a long time, he didn’t feel quite so alone.

---

“I was just finishing up,” he lied, folding the report close.

“You’re lying,” she said, not cruelly. Just… honest. “You haven’t slept and you weren’t going to. Again.”

He tried to smile and failed miserably. “You checking up on me, Healer?”

She shrugged, looking up at him from under lashes longer than anyone burdened with war should have. “Just happened to be nearby.”

He snorted softly, the sound foreign in his own throat. “You always happen to be nearby.”

Something flickered in her expression, like maybe she’d been caught.

But instead of backpedaling, she leaned in. “Someone has to make sure you don’t keel over mid-strategy meeting.”

He stared at her. This woman who always smelled faintly of dried herbs and firepowder. Who patched him up, in more ways than one, without asking questions, who pressed tea to help him sleep into his hand when he forgot how to ask for help.

“You know you don’t have to do this,” he said quietly. “I’m not your responsibility.”

Her eyes softened. “You’re not a responsibility, Brennan. You’re a person.

One who’s drowning and doesn’t even see the tide rising.”

And gods help him, something in him cracked.

—

I've been wanting to post this little fanfic for a while now! I've got some other one shots that revolve around this story, maybe if people like this I'll post those too.

I'm also currently working on another fanfic in a modern AU and that is taking me so longggg. If I do ever finish it I'll post it here too.

guys i have a confession 😔😔 i actually dont really care about xaden and the only reason im reading onyx storm is for aaric 😔😔✊✊

probably missing something, but i've just always wondered if since Xaden and Violet's parents were all important political and noble figures in Navarre, isn't it likely that they had all been around each other at some point for some ceremony or meeting or ball or something before the rebellion? Xaden and Violet don't know each other at the beginning of Fourth Wing obviously, but maybe they'd seen each other around as kids at big gatherings of Navarrian political leaders? bebe riorgail playing pranks or games with all the other children of leaders at a big fancy (and boring) adult event is my fav hc.

Tairn is the dragon version of a death god and Violet is the only human alive who can sass him

All the dragons treat Tairn like he’s a myth come to life, like the gothic grandfather of death and fire. Riders flinch when he lands, other dragons lower their heads, professors literally move aside.

And then they see violet, this tiny, breakable, puny human walk up to him and go “Oh, for fuck's sake, Tairn.” and he just listens????

Violet has done what no other rider has: domesticated the DRAGON OF LEGEND and made him emotionally accountable.

She literally told the equivalent of a fire-breathing nuclear weapon to calm down and he DID.

Violet and Xaden

Yall I'm having a military romance brainrot but I can't find any good ones. PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE RECOMMEND SOME GOOD MILITARY ROMANCE like i want the xaden and violet kinda thing.

I'm so sick of people categorising books where the dude is in the military as a military romance. Like brother, I am looking for regimentation, we're in the middle of a war(or not) but I can't get my mind off my commanding officer kinda thing.

Please help me yall