The King's Gambit: The Bastard Son Returns Novel

Keiser, a manaless commoner knight, defied all odds to reach the final trial of the King's Gambit—a brutal competition where anyone, noble or peasant, can claim the crown. Fighting alongside Prince Gideon, the king's fourth son who had renounced his claim to support him, Keiser believed in their bond. He was wrong. In the final trial, Gideon revealed the truth: Keiser had been nothing but a pawn, a shield to draw assassins while Gideon secured his own path to power. Betrayed and impaled by the very sword Gideon had gifted him, Keiser died watching his friend claim the throne through treachery. But death wasn't the end. Keiser awakens as Muzio Auro Valemont, the king's disgraced bastard son, doomed to die before the Gambit begins. To prevent history from repeating, he must warn his former self of Gideon's betrayal—even if it means entering the trials in a body too weak to fight, mastering forbidden Blood Scripting, and abandoning his quest for the crown. Now, he seeks only vengeance.