Terminus 3 excerpt: Swing by Kortney Watkins

February 1715 brought the end of the Tuscarora War and with it everything that Charles Justice Woodcreek knew. With his parents, aunts, uncles, brothers, and other older family now missing, dead, or fled, Charles inherited the role of patriarch at just twenty-six. It was a burden, but one that was necessary for the remaining family to survive. For him to survive. Pieces of him had died bit-by-bit with every rape, every kill, every atrocity that humankind was never meant to experience, but family members and friends did. He needed to survive.

The challenges of a man’s survival were an accepted part of life, but trouble was not. It was not natural, and Charles felt that within his soul. The trouble was that trouble did not end when the war did. Years of mistrust between the ever-increasing number of European settlers (a direct result of the propaganda spread by European powers always lusting for more and colonial enthusiasts running away from perceived and sometimes real oppression and injustices) and the Indigenous peoples—peoples that had been in conflict with one another since the beginning of colonization—had come to yet another head, and the impending shadow of still another war was brewing.

Terminus 3 drops September 13, 2025. Preorder today by clicking the image below: