World of Shadows
Horror · Supernatural Thriller · 3 Books
From prison exorcisms to Vatican conspiracies to inherited legacies — three interconnected tales expose the corruption festering at the heart of holy institutions, where faith becomes a weapon and evil wears a cassock.
I wrote this series because I wanted to explore what happens when the organizations built to protect us become the problem. In World on Fire, you've got the Council and the Hunters fighting demons from the shadows. But what about the Church? What about these ancient hierarchies that have had centuries to accumulate secrets — and centuries for those secrets to curdle into something genuinely monstrous?
World of Shadows is that story. Each book peels back another layer. You start in a prison in Washington state with a priest who doesn't believe in demons anymore. By the third book, you're watching a fifteen-year-old telepath activate thirty conditioned children across America, and you're asking yourself whether the real demon here was the institution that made him.
These aren't standalone horror stories. They're pieces of a bigger puzzle — set in the same Raven Universe as World on Fire, pulling back the curtain on the machinery that's supposed to be keeping humanity safe. Turns out the machinery has some very dark gears.
The thing is, institutional horror hits differently than supernatural horror. A demon in a basement is terrifying. A bishop who is the demon, wearing a cassock and shaking your hand at Sunday Mass — that's the kind of evil that keeps me up at night.
The Books
Book 1: The Everett Exorcism
Father Niccolo Paladina stopped believing in demons three years ago, after watching his mentor die screaming during an exorcism in Manila. He's been safe in Rome ever since — processing paperwork, reviewing claims from a comfortable desk.
When a young priest bypasses the chain of command to request Vatican intervention in Everett, Washington, Niccolo is sent to discipline him. Not to perform an exorcism. Definitely not to confront Arthur Vangeest, a Church assassin who shows up claiming the conspiracy goes all the way to the top.
He's right. The local bishop is too calm. The possessed are spreading through town like a plague. And beneath the cathedral basements, there are rooms that shouldn't exist.
Get The Everett Exorcism on Amazon →
Book 2: The Vatican Children
Arthur Vangeest wants one thing: Bishop Leopold Glasser dead. But when he discovers that Glasser has been conditioning psychic children as weapons — kids with real gifts, kids whose names are scratched into the walls of underground cells — vengeance stops being simple.
Arthur and Niccolo go off-book. From Sacramento nightclubs to bunkers in the Arizona desert, they're following a trail that leads somewhere neither of them is prepared for. And there's a dead man's switch set to trigger the moment Glasser dies.
Justice has a cost. Both men will pay it.
Get The Vatican Children on Amazon →
Book 3: The Bishop's Legacy
The bishop is dead. His army of psychic children is awake.
When Arthur Vangeest kills Bishop Glasser at the Everett shipyard, he stops one monster and wakes another. Glasser's fifteen-year-old protégé Jeremy Caldwell sends thirty activation codes from his dead father's phone, unleashing a network of conditioned children across America. Six incidents in forty-eight hours. Churches in ash. Minds rewritten.
Arthur races to Akron, Ohio. Jeremy is a telepath who can override human free will. He's grief-stricken, fifteen years old, and he's been raised from infancy as a weapon. The question isn't whether some legacies can be broken. It's whether Arthur is the one who can break them.
Get The Bishop's Legacy on Amazon →
Meet the Characters
Protagonists
Father Niccolo Paladina — Protagonist
A Vatican priest who stopped believing in demons three years ago. Everett, Washington is about to change that — and him.
Arthur Vangeest — Protagonist
Church assassin turned rogue operative. A man built for violence, hunting the people who destroyed his family. He'll get what he came for. The question is what he becomes in the process.
Haatim — Protagonist
Pulled into the shadow war from the outside, still finding his footing in a world that operates by rules nobody bothered to explain. He appears in World on Fire too — and his story keeps getting bigger.
Abigail — Protagonist
A Hunter with history across the Raven Universe. She has seen more than most, survived things most wouldn't, and she's still here. That means something.
Desiree — Protagonist
A Hunter with a complicated relationship to the Church and to the things living in the dark. She knows exactly what she's walking into.
The Opposition
Bishop Leopold Glasser — Antagonist
A prince of the Church with ambitions that long ago stopped having anything to do with salvation. Every conspiracy needs someone at the top who believes their ends justify everything.
Jeremy Caldwell — Antagonist
Fifteen years old. Telepathic. Raised from infancy as a weapon. He's not the villain the way Glasser is the villain — he's something more complicated, and that makes him more dangerous.
Belphegor — Antagonist
A demon old enough to have watched empires burn. He has patience. He's been waiting in the dark while humans built the institutions that would let him move freely.
Nida — Antagonist
Corruption given a human face and a position of trust. She knows exactly what she is, and she's made her peace with it.
What This Series Is Really About
At its core, World of Shadows is asking one question: what happens when the thing built to protect you becomes the threat?
Faith is everywhere in these books — not as comfort, but as a weapon. The institutions these characters were raised to trust have been hollowing themselves out from the inside for decades. The Church, the hierarchies that are supposed to stand between humanity and the dark — riddled with rot. And the people who discover that rot have to decide what to do about it.
The cost of fighting evil is a real theme here, not a slogan. Niccolo gives up his safe desk in Rome. Arthur gives up the one thing that was keeping him human — the idea that this could be finished cleanly, with one kill. Legacy keeps coming up too: what do we inherit from the people who shaped us, especially when what they've built is monstrous? Jeremy Caldwell is the most extreme version of that question. He didn't choose what he became. But he has to live with it.
One thing I've learned is that institutional horror hits differently than supernatural horror. A demon in a basement is terrifying. A bishop who is the demon, wearing a cassock and shaking your hand at Sunday Mass — that's the kind of evil that keeps me up at night. I wanted to write a series that earned both kinds of fear.
Fans of The Exorcist, Constantine, Angels and Demons, and Supernatural will enjoy this series.
Content warnings: Graphic violence, demonic possession and exorcism, religious trauma and corruption, body horror, institutional betrayal, psychological terror.
World of Shadows is part of Lincoln Cole's connected fiction universe — a shelf of series that share characters and lore.
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Every available book in World of Shadows is in Kindle Unlimited — read it free with your subscription, or buy your copy on Amazon.
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