Free prequel story

The Edmund Fragments

In 1275, a monk named Edmund drew circles and arrows in the margins of a theology book. They weren't decoration. They were the first system dynamics diagrams — 700 years before the field was invented.

He was murdered for it. But his manuscripts survived. Seventy-two years later, a young scribe named Thomas of Eltville found them — and everything changed.

This is Edmund's story. The one the novel only hints at.

5,000 wordsA complete short story, not a teaser or excerpt.

Original prequelEvents 72 years before The Aethelred Cipher that the novel references but never shows.

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The Edmund Fragments

"This is the wheel that turns itself. Each revolution feeds the next."
— Brother Edmund, 1275

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What readers are saying about The Aethelred Cipher

"If you like Umberto Eco's The Name of the Rose but wish it had the pacing of a thriller, this is your book."

The Edmund Fragments is set in the same world as The Aethelred Cipher, the first book in The Architecture of Survival — a 12-book series spanning 3,200 years from Bronze Age Egypt to the modern era.

The novel follows Thomas, Margarethe, and a fourteen-year-old girl named Maria as they uncover the full scope of a centuries-old conspiracy during the Black Death of 1347 — and attempt to scatter its secrets across Europe before they're silenced forever.

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