Snippet #1: Prince of Clovers Prologue.

The text which you are about to read is the prologue of Prince of Clovers in its current form and is subject to change in the final book.

Antonio Heron - November 6, 2025

The boy was only six when the strange man first paid him a visit.

He concluded his nocturnal routine: he shoed the chickens into the coop, fetched cold water from the nearby well, and dropped the last of the salmonberries he’d picked into his basket. With two wobbling hands and a set of trembling legs, he carried his gatherings home.

Once inside the humble cottage, he barred the front door with a wooden slab and left the basket in the kitchen for his grandmother to find. He and Gamma lived in the Tempian villages; nothing exciting ever happened here. It was odd to the boy. For his home to be roped in with the great capital of Tempus, yet to live on its outskirts as if his village were nothing more than a reeking dog that was better left outside and away from lavish furniture.

He lived a strenuous life with days filled with demanding labor that could leave even a boy his age past the brink of exhaustion—and it often did.

But tonight, he would not sleep even if his body begged it.

Tonight… a Rebian moon would ascend and veil the sky with its deep amethyst hue. He often recalled how his Gamma described a Rebian moon. How its abundant glow wrapped a mirage around the trees and the flowers; how the yellow lilies and red pansies wore lavender’s facade under its influence. How the three crystal towers at the center of the capital diffused their glow to allow the heavenly body dominate the realm.

Only once every three years did the Celestial Mage Rebro lend his purple eye to the continent… and the boy would not miss it for the world. Grandeur seldom took its turn in the villages. It was in moments like these—spectacles that the entire world could share under the same sky—that the boy felt connected to something greater than himself. Even if the experience was something he’d have to learn to ration with billions of other watchful eyes.

He bolted out of bed only seconds after his grandmother had tucked him in. He kneeled atop a wooden chair he’d set by his only window earlier that week, placed his arms comfortably on the sill, and dropped his small chin.

Truth was, many nights he spent like this. Watching. Longing for his calling card to lift him out of his window and propel him into an adventurous world that would be all the better with him in it. He was destined for it—of that, the boy was sure. After all, his cottage stood at the village’s edge, providing him with the best view of the crystal towers that glistened miles away at the heart of the city. To the boy, this was no coincidence. Truth was, many nights he fell asleep on that windowsill.

He closed his eyes and allowed the village’s night life to obscure his senses: the vigorous laughter of a trio playing cards two cottages over; the thunderous percussion of drums moving through the dirt paths with fairy flutes to accompany them; the marching feet of dancers seduced by folk music; roasted beef’s aroma distilled onto a whisk of smoke ascending toward the sky out of a nearby home’s open window.

Then came the snap of a twig and the rustle of displaced leaves. His eyes gaped open. And gazed upon the new arrival.

A man.

He was standing by the well from which the boy had collected water earlier. His tall, skeletal figure was drowned in shadow, given away by a pair of emerald orbs suspended where his eyes should’ve been.

The sight of a person this late in the fields was not a rare one. But this stranger had an aimlessness about him that made the boy’s skin tingle. He was more still than the trees, and his green eyes more persistent than a cat’s.

Shocked and puzzled, the boy could think of nothing else to do but stare back.

It wasn’t until the Rebian moon began to poke its violet head from below the horizon’s shadow that the man in the night-colored cloak vanished like dust in the wind. At some point during the boy’s delirium, the world had been rendered amethyst. Thunderous applause and ritualistic roars echoed throughout the village. But none of the noise registered to the child; he wanted only to decipher the mystery of the green-eyed man who preceded his first Rebian moon.

That night, the boy dreamt of strange symbols he’d never seen before. Illustrations painted in colors he never knew existed. Symbols that whispered answers to questions he didn’t know he had. Manifestations that burned his retina by their mere apparition in his witching-hour fantasies.

Three years would pass before the strange man returned to watch him again…