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A Fantasy Romance Series

Riftguardby Tasha Meldan

A world torn by magic. A bond that should not exist. A slow burn that will wreck you.

Book One · Launching 18th November 2026 · Miranova House
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Until the Rifts Open — 18 November 2026
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Riftguard Book One by Tasha Meldan
Book One · Riftguard Series

Riftguard

Fantasy RomanceSlow BurnEnemies to LoversAdult
"And the Rifts break before us."

Death was only the beginning.

When Saiya Wildthorn awakens after death, she is conscripted into the Riftguards, soldiers reborn to hold back the monsters pouring through rifts in the fabric of the world. Within the black walls of Vaerngard, the Reborn are trained to become weapons, not people. Survival demands obedience. Hesitation is fatal. Attachment is dangerous.

But as ancient magic begins to stir and Riftguards start to vanish, Saiya uncovers fractures beneath the fortress's unbreakable image. Secrets coil through the ranks. The Council watches too closely. And her commander, Corin Dravehall, feared, brilliant, and brutally controlled, is not the cold weapon the world believes him to be.

Drawn together by shared shadows and truths neither can speak aloud, Saiya and Corin form a bond that could cost them everything. In a system built to erase choice, trust becomes rebellion. Desire becomes a liability. And love may be the most dangerous magic of all.

As the Rifts widen and darkness stirs beyond the Veil, Saiya must decide whether to remain the soldier they shaped… or become the one who burns their lies to the ground.

A story of resurrection, elemental warfare, and slow-burn forbidden romance, Riftguard is an emotionally charged fantasy about power, sacrifice, and what it means to choose yourself in a world determined to own you.

Book One of The Riftguard Archives, by independent UK fantasy romance author Tasha Meldan.

Line/Copy Editor — Cameron-Rose Neil
Cover Illustrator — Hailey Puent
Internal Illustrations — Tasha Meldan

Recommended for readers 18+ (violence and adult intimacy).

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Paperback & Special Edition Hardcover
Riftguard Book One
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The World

Welcome to Vaerngard

01
The Six Orders

Five Orders govern the power of the Riftguard. Taneth commands fire. Awel commands air. Tirn commands earth. Dour commands water. Nox commands shadow. Each is ancient. Each is understood. Each Riftguard commands one elemental power.

The sixth is none of these things. It was destroyed before it could be understood, erased from record and memory until the world forgot it had ever existed. No Riftguard alive has carried it since. No Commander has trained for it. Saiya Wildthorn is proof that it didn't stay buried.

Her Commander is the only Riftguard in living memory to carry two Orders. One mark the world recognises and respects. The other, it fears.

02
Vaerngard

Vaerngard is where the Reborn become Riftguards.

Part fortress, part training ground, carved into the mountains that surround Verinna's great warded walls, it has stood for five hundred years against everything the Rifts have sent through. Its Commanders are feared. Its standards are without mercy. Its graduates are the only line between the living world and what tears through the Veil to reach it.

No one leaves Vaerngard unchanged. Most don't leave at all.

03
Highwards and Lowwards

Verinna's walls do not just keep the darkness out. They decide who deserves to be kept safe from it.

The Highwards live within — protected, prosperous, and entirely certain that this is the natural order of things. The Lowwards live without — outside the walls entirely, exposed to whatever bleeds through the nearest Rift, building lives in the shadow of a city that has never truly considered them its responsibility.

The Rifts do not check which side of the walls you were born on. Vaerngard does not either. Inside the Citadel, the oath is the only thing that matters. For those who grew up outside the walls, it is the first time the city has ever looked at them with respect.

And every one of them remembers exactly how much they have lost to get there.

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Tasha Meldan
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The Author

Tasha Meldan

"She writes books about pointy weapons, fantasy worlds where women stand their ground, and the kind of love that should not, by any reasonable measure, work out."

Tasha Meldan is a UK-based fantasy romance author with a deep love for morally grey love interests, found families, and slow burns that earn their happily ever after. Her debut novel, Riftguard, is the first in a series she's been plotting — and living inside — for longer than she'd like to admit.

When she isn't writing in the margins of Vaerngard, Tasha works as a freelance graphic designer, runs her own creative business, and is raising her daughter alongside a wonderful husband and two warrior cats who are absolutely in charge of the household.

A Note on the World

Riftguard was born in the wreckage of a version of myself I no longer recognised. Covid didn't just change the world — it changed me. I became a new mother in the middle of it. I lost the ability to work the way I always had. The identity I'd built carefully over years quietly fell apart, and I was left with the questions that follow that kind of loss: What do I do now? Where do I go from here? Who can I become?

The answer was Vaerngard. The answer was Saiya. A woman who had also lost everything she thought she was, who also had to find out what she was made of when the ground disappeared beneath her.

The rest is what happens when you follow your characters into the dark and trust that something worth finding is waiting there.

Begin the Story

Read Riftguard

Start reading before the 18th November 2026 launch. The Prologue is free. Chapter 1 unlocks when you subscribe to the Danfron Journal.

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Prologue

Where every story begins, when Saiya is still a child.

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Chapter One

Saiya arrives at Vaerngard as a Reborn.

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World Lore

Enter Vaerngard

Vaerngard does not welcome visitors. Built into the mountain rock beyond Verinna's walls, it is as old as the city it protects. It is a fortress city in its own right — self-contained, self-sufficient, and entirely devoted to a single purpose: training Riftguards capable of surviving what comes through the Veil.

The Citadel has stood for five hundred years. Its stones remember things the history books have chosen to forget. Verinna sits in its shadow — a walled city of commerce, culture, and something approaching ordinary life, built on the quiet understanding that the thing standing between it and destruction is a mountain fortress full of soldiers who died once and came back marked for war.

The people of Verinna go about their days. They trade and worship and argue about politics. They try not to think too hard about what holds the darkness back. Most of the time, they succeed.
"May the Veil know their name."
The Nerathi make that wilful ignorance difficult. The creatures that emerge from the Rifts do not follow natural law. They are not animals. They are not monsters, exactly. They are something that existed before the language for what they are was invented, and they come through the tear between worlds with purpose. What the Riftguards know — what five hundred years of blood has taught them — is that the Nerathi can be stopped with the magic they possess. It costs something every time. The question is always whether what remains after the cost is enough to hold the next time.

The Council of Seven governs Verinna in the King's name from behind walls they have never had to defend themselves. They are not without power — they fund the Riftguard, control the Orders, and decide which voices are heard in the city below. What they are without is any real understanding of what happens beyond the walls, and any particular desire to acquire one.

The Riftguard protects Verinna. The Council governs it. The two have never fully agreed on what that division of responsibility actually means — and the disagreement, quietly and over many years, has curdled into something that looks a great deal like another war.
The Six Orders
OrderElementCommander
DourWaterKeela Rowan
AwelAirLirael Voan
TirnEarthRook Feldren
TanethFireTayven Halverin
NoxShadowCorin Dravehall
The SixthUnknownUnknown
OrderColourInsignia
DourBlueTwin fish
AwelYellowTwin falcon
TirnGreenTwin stags
TanethRedTwin lion
NoxGreyTwin serpent
The SixthNot recordedNot recorded
Key Locations
  • Novareth · The World
  • Vaerngard · The Citadel
  • Verinna · The City
  • The Breakline · Training Grounds
  • The Spine · Final Trial
  • The Rifts · The Breach
Squad X-01
  • Kael Dornell · First Rank, Dour
  • Eryn Solmere · Second Rank, Awel
  • Loras Veylen · Third Rank, Tirn
  • Saiya Wildthorn
  • Lian Elwyn
  • Kallen Rusk
  • Tarn Mercer
  • Deyric Hollan
  • Veyra Morn
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