A note before you read this
This is the reference page for The Darklands. Spoilers for the entire trilogy throughout — there is no way to lay out a complete timeline without giving away every ending, every death, every reveal. If you have not finished book three, save this. The page will read better once you have everything in your head and just need a place to put it.
For everyone else: this is the page I kept on my own wall while I was drafting. It has been cleaned up for paid members. Bookmark it and read alongside re-reads.
How the timeline is anchored
The trilogy is told mostly in a forward direction, but with two important reorderings. First, The Choice (book one chapter five) and Annis (chapter eight) span Petro from age fourteen to about thirty-four across compressed sections. Second, Awakening (book one chapter eleven) flashes forward twelve years to age fifty before book two even starts. Reading the timeline straight makes both of those reorderings easier to track on a re-read.
All dates below are years before or years after book one's prologue. The prologue is the Ashwick massacre. BP = before prologue. AP = after prologue.
Pre-Collapse to Imperial codification
Roughly 10,000 BP — Pre-Collapse civilization at peak. Two faiths coexist on a single populated continent. The eastern provinces are the most fertile region in the known world.
Roughly 9,800 BP — Resource war begins. The Empire and the eastern provinces fight over the eastern grain belt. Both faiths begin weaponizing.
Roughly 9,750 BP — The Collapse. The Church's Godsbane relic and the Mithras Voidcaller working collide in eastern combat. The eastern continent is rendered glassy waste — the Darklands. Both sides walk away. Both sides blame the other. Source: the Citadel deep archive (book 3 chapter 3).
Roughly 9,700 BP — Mithras retreat. The first Citadel is rebuilt in the eastern foothills as a school of restraint, refugee work, and forgetting.
Roughly 9,650 BP — Church codification. Cleansing doctrine drafted. Magic redefined as demonic, no exceptions. The Order of Knights Inquisitor founded. Source: Inquisitorial canon, Westminster.
The lifetimes leading up to the prologue
Roughly 80 BP — Sir Martin born.
Roughly 75 BP — Catherine born. Sir Martin's wife.
Roughly 50 BP — Catherine executed. A falsified property petition triggers a witchcraft accusation. Sir Martin discovers the petition months later. Joins the Order of Knights Inquisitor with the long, secret intent of breaking it from inside. Source: Sir Martin's account, book 1 chapter 15.
Roughly 12 BP — Petro Marok, Hank, and Suzanne born. All three within the same year, in or near Ashwick.
The prologue and Petro's first decade in Westminster
Year 0 — The Ashwick massacre. Duke Aldric, the Duchess, the Guard Captain, and dozens of accused Mithras worshippers executed in the town square. Hank's grief manifests blue fire. The priest burns. The town burns. Suzanne is taken; Petro pulls her free. He retrieves the priest's gold sun pendant from the ashes. Book 1 chapters 1–3.
Year 0, three days later — Sir Martin arrives. Frames the massacre as a demon attack. Walks Petro and Suzanne to Westminster. Book 1 chapter 3.
Year 4 AP — Petro and Suzanne living in Sir Martin's household. Petro begins squire training. Suzanne begins her secret archive work. Book 1 chapter 4.
Year 2 AP — The Westminster market manifestation. Seamstress Marta involuntarily kills eleven people. Petro, fourteen, rescues a child from the wreckage. Marta executed. Petro accepts the knight's commission. Book 1 chapter 5.
Year 4 AP — Petro earns his spurs. Inquisitor Malchus presides at the ceremony. Sir Martin calls Petro son for the first time. Book 1 chapter 6.
Year 4 AP — First investigations. Hedge healer Elara of Thornfield — Petro's first real mission. Most accusations turn out to be personal grudges. Book 1 chapter 6.
Year 8 AP — Suzanne's first confirmed link. Inquisitor Voss connected to coordinated property seizures. Forty-seven dead through Voss alone, by her count. Book 1 chapter 7.
Years 8 to 14 AP — Petro's middle years. Mission cycles erode his faith. The fifteen-year-old girl, the framed farmer, the boy named Tomas. He keeps the dates in his head. Book 1 chapter 8.
The Citadel of Shadows raid and the Westminster reckoning
Year 14 AP — The Citadel of Shadows raid. Petro leads fifty soldiers into the Darklands. Eight die. He kills the high priest. He discovers Hank's letter and Brother Ash's journal portraying Hank as a healer. Hank himself appears in camp the same night. Petro lets Hank walk away. Book 1 chapter 9.
Year 14 AP — Petro and Suzanne marry. Off-page; referenced obliquely in The World Changes. Book 1 chapter 10.
Year 14 AP — Millhaven. Petro investigates the nine-year-old miller's son with the magical circle. Discovers the property record pattern: a denied petition seven months before the witchcraft accusation, sealed by Inquisitor Crane. Note: this event is told in book 1 chapter 12 as a flashback set 24 years before the Thornfield Forest scene.
Year 15 AP — The Millhaven confrontation. Sir Martin and Petro confront Deacon Aldwin. Return to Westminster with Thomas Brennan and his son Marcus. Four copies of evidence prepared. Knight Commander Ashford confirms the corruption may be empire-wide. Malchus confronts them. The company flees Westminster through the drainage arch. Book 1 chapters 13–14.
Year 15 AP — The winter conclave at Harwood Manor. Suzanne presents three years of evidence — forty-seven cases across four provinces. Father Aldric's theological letter is read aloud. Petro delivers the closing argument. The Lords vote with Petro. The Office of Special Investigations is created with Suzanne as chief investigator. Book 1 chapters 15–17.
Year 15 AP — Sir Martin remains at Harwood Manor. Petro and Suzanne return to Westminster as authorized investigators of the Order. Book 1 chapter 17.
The long middle years
Roughly year 18 AP — Elena Marok born. Adopted daughter of Petro and Suzanne, raised mostly in Sir Martin's household.
Year 22 AP — The Halworth execution. Petro executes Thomas Halworth — the cooper — knowing the accusation is fabricated for property gain. Elena confronts Petro the night before her wedding. Marriage to Marcus. Book 1 chapter 10.
Roughly year 26 AP — Suzanne's first death. Note: this is the first death the published trilogy shows you, but the Suzanne who appears in book 2 is alive. The trilogy carries her death as a flashback Petro is moving through out of order. The events of book 1 chapter 11 are, in objective time, twelve years after this date.
Year 26 AP, three months later — The boy in the meadow. Ten years old. Made flowers bloom. The kill that ends Petro's capacity for self-justification. Book 1 chapter 11.
Year 38 AP — The girl in Thornfield Forest. Sixteen years old, healing magic, golden. She looks like Suzanne at sixteen. She dies silently, mouthing Why. Petro is fifty. Book 1 chapter 11.
Book two
Year 38 AP — The commission. Petro accepts the assignment to investigate the Citadel of Light. Book 2 chapter 1.
Year 38 AP — The road and the observation point. Three days at the hilltop watching the Citadel. The funeral with genuine grief. The first crack in his frame. Book 2 chapters 2–3.
Year 38 AP — Inside the walls. Petro infiltrates as a grieving refugee. Meets Elder Miriam, Father Aldric (defected Church), Lydia, the children, Mark, Cara, the survivor whose sister he killed. Hank reveals he has been watching Petro since arrival. Book 2 chapters 4–9.
Year 38 AP — The battle. Marcus's zealot assault on the Citadel. Petro stops Marcus and shows mercy. Citadel council debates Petro's fate. Redemption is not earned. It's chosen daily. Decision: stay, but face his past. Book 2 chapters 10–11.
Year 38 AP — The letter. Petro writes the I cannot come home, I love you, I am setting you free letter to Suzanne. Months later, he begins teaching at the Citadel and training with Hank. Book 2 chapters 12–13.
Book three
Year 38 AP, three months after book two — The defenders. Petro trains Citadel defenders, mixing magic users and non-magic refugees. Daily mentoring with Anna. Scouts return: Church army of 1000+ marching. Diplomacy fails. Book 3 chapters 1–2.
Year 38 AP — The deep archive. The night before the siege. Elder Miriam reveals the truth about the Collapse to Petro and Hank: both faiths caused it, both retreated into different lies, both have been lying ever since. Book 3 chapter 3.
Year 38 AP — The parley. Sir Martin enters the Citadel under truce. He sees Lydia's class. He returns to camp changed. Book 3 chapter 4.
Year 38 AP — The siege. Two hundred refugees evacuated through the chapel tunnels. Brother Marcus defects mid-assault, taking forty-three soldiers with him. Hank refuses devastating power. Gregory dies. The keep falls. Nine survivors escape into the forest. Book 3 chapters 11–12.
Year 38 AP, one month later — Scattered. The nine fan out. Petro and Suzanne south. Hank north (deliberately drawing hunters). Sir Martin and Captain Reyna to Westminster. Brother Marcus east. Book 3 chapter 13.
Year 38 AP, two months later — The Council vote. Westminster High Council, eight to seven for reforms. Councilor Marcus provides the deciding vote. The Church fractures. Reform begins. Book 3 chapters 14–15.
After the trilogy
Year 43 AP — Five years after the siege. Citadel network and reformed Church establish formal peace. Magic users live openly in some regions. New generation taught true history. Sarah Marok born to Petro and Suzanne in New Haven. Book 3 chapter 16.
Year 58 AP — Twenty years after the siege. Memorial dedicated at the Citadel ruins. The Church issues a formal apology. Sarah, age fifteen, chooses the healing path. Book 3 chapter 17.
Year 61 AP — Petro dies. Age seventy-three, at New Haven, of old age. Suzanne at his side. Hank sends a black rosemary cutting from the north. Book 3 chapter 18.
Year 68 AP — Thirty years after the siege. New Haven holds 412 families. Sarah carries the work. Memorial stands. Institutional genocide ends. Book 3 epilogue.
The factions, in one paragraph each
Church of the Lord of Light — the Empire's load-bearing institution. Owns property, doctrine, and history. Schism in book three produces the reformed Church (Marcus, Elena, Ashford's heirs) and the orthodox Church (Aldric, the dwindling Voss faction). The orthodoxy is, by year 68 AP, a minority sect in slow demographic decline.
Order of Knights Inquisitor — the Church's investigative and military arm. Sir Martin, Petro, Malchus, Ashford. Reformed top-to-bottom in the decade after book three.
Office of Special Investigations — created at the Harwood conclave, year 15 AP. Suzanne's office. Civilian-led, reports to the House of Lords. Becomes the institutional check on the Order in the next generation.
Citadel of Light, Mithras faith — the eastern refuge and school of restraint. Elder Miriam, Lydia, Father Aldric (defected). The school survives the siege as a network of smaller sanctuaries. By year 68 AP it has rebuilt at three sites, none on the original ruins.
Mithras zealot wing — the Citadel of Shadows cult, the Tomas movement, Hank as reluctant figurehead. Largely dissolves by book three. The few survivors integrate into the reformed Citadel network.
Orthodox Church under Aldric — the breakaway high doctrine after the schism. Holds parts of three provinces at the close of the trilogy. By year 68 AP it has not made a witchcraft conviction in over a decade.
New Haven — Petro and Suzanne's sanctuary settlement, founded around year 43 AP and grown over the next twenty-five years. Mixed-faith. Governed by elected magistrates plus one representative each from the Mithras schools and the reformed Church chapel. 412 families at year 68 AP.
Geography, in plain language
The continent is shaped, more or less, like a slept-on shoulder.
The west is settled imperial farmland. Westminster, the Knight Tower, the Citadel of Light (the Church's seat), Karthane, Thornfield, Millhaven, the northern foothills, Lord Harwood's estate. This is where books one and two spend most of their time.
The center is the Darklands. A thousand miles of glassy waste left by the Collapse. Nothing meaningful grows there. The wind has the wrong sound. Petro's first march across it kills eight men.
The east is the foothills and forest where the Mithras Citadel was rebuilt after the Collapse. This is where book two and most of book three take place. By the end of book three the Citadel itself is rubble; the Mithras refuges are scattered across the foothills in three smaller sites and one mountain pass settlement.
The far south is where Petro and Suzanne settle to found New Haven. The trilogy never describes that country in detail because Petro never travels back through it after he settles there. Sarah's adult life takes place there, mostly outside the trilogy's frame.
Reading order
The trilogy is the trilogy. There is no companion novella, no anthology, no short story I expect you to read alongside it.
If you want a re-read order that handles the book one chapter eleven flash-forward more gracefully on the second pass, try this. Read book one straight through the first time, the way it is published. On the re-read, read chapters one through ten, skip eleven, read twelve through seventeen, then go back and read eleven last. The reorder makes the Thornfield Forest scene land where the timeline actually places it, instead of as the disorienting jump it (deliberately) is on a first read.
If you want a reading order that reveals the deep-archive truth earlier — don't. Book three chapter three is one of three load-bearing pillars of the trilogy and it does not work if you already know the symmetry of the Collapse. Read it the way it was published, in the chair you are sitting in, the night you sit down to it.
Acknowledgements
This page exists because readers asked for it. If a date here is wrong, write to me at the address on the contact page and I will fix it. The trilogy is finished, but a reference page is a living document.
Thank you for reading.
Member short story: Year of the Slow Knife — the executioner's apprentice and the recant on the gallows steps, set between Ashes of Innocence and Flames of Doubt.
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