The Covenant Isles ● Where Balance Is an Ongoing Sacrifice

A Realm Without Rule

The Covenant Isles exist because no one can rule balance.

Balance requires tending.

Neutral, Not Empty

The Isles form a scattered, ever-shifting archipelago with no monarch and no single capital. The Isles are neutral territory.
And they stand as sacred ground.

That distinction matters.

While writing Book Two, I shaped this realm as I learned that balance isn’t the absence of conflict, but rather the willingness to keep choosing within it. There are no permanent solutions here. Only practices. Rituals. Returns.

The Covenant is home to the last descendants of the Arcane Witches and, moreover, to a memory that shaped the entire world. It was also the place where Aistriana’s first mate came from, the Witch who sacrificed herself to seal the first breach. As a result, the Isles remember that moment not as tragedy alone, but as an inherited responsibility.

What Balance Demands

Balance magic here doesn’t fix things.
Alchemy doesn’t purify, it transforms.
Prophecy doesn’t promise safety, it demands readiness.

Sacrifice rites exist not because suffering is holy, but rather because some choices require letting go of what you love in order to protect what must endure. The Isles teach that neutrality is not distance. It is presence without possession.

Why the Isles Exist

In my own process, the Covenant Isles represent the phase where I stopped looking for a final answer. Ultimately, this was where I accepted that some tensions will never resolve, and that my work was not to silence them, but to live among them without losing myself.

There is no throne here, because balance collapses under hierarchy. Likewise, there is no fixed capital, because certainty hardens into dogma. For the same reason, there is no single voice, because harmony requires listening.

The Covenant Isles exist, therefore, because holding the middle is work.

And, ultimately, because I was learning how to do it.