Eternal Ruin by Tigest Girma

Here is a summary with spoilers for Eternal Ruin by Tigest Girma

Eternal Ruin begins only a few days after the events of Immortal Dark. Kidan has survived the chaos at Uxlay, but her situation is worse rather than better. June, the sister Kidan spent the first book searching for, has returned, but she is now allied with Samson Sagad and the Nefrasi. Samson is living at Adane House with Kidan and June, and Kidan is determined to kill him. At the same time, Samson wants the artifact that he believes is hidden inside Adane House. Kidan knows that the house contains something important, but she does not initially understand exactly what the artifact is or why so many vampires are willing to kill for it. The political situation at Uxlay also changes immediately because the Border Houses begin moving against Adane House and questioning whether Kidan deserves to inherit it.

Kidan is particularly focused on mastering Adane House. The houses of Uxlay are not simply buildings; each one is connected to a specific culture, history, and set of laws. A house recognizes a master based on several elements of that person's identity, including their relationship to the house's culture. Kidan has spent most of her life separated from her Ethiopian heritage and has deliberately distanced herself from much of the legacy left by her parents. Now she is being forced to decide whether she will inherit that legacy or reject it. If she cannot master Adane House, she risks losing both her family's position and the protection the house provides.

Kidan's relationship with Samson is immediately hostile. Samson is physically and psychologically dangerous, and he repeatedly pressures Kidan for information about the artifact. He knows that something important is concealed within Adane House, but Kidan refuses to tell him what she knows. Samson also has a personal history with Susenyos, and their conflict becomes one of the major sources of tension throughout the book. Samson is not simply trying to gain political power. His actions are tied to his history with the Nefrasi and to his desire to obtain the power contained in the ancient artifacts.

The novel also introduces more of Susenyos's point of view. His history with the Nefrasi is explained in greater detail. Susenyos was once their emperor and was responsible for turning his court into vampires. He eventually abandoned them, leaving the Nefrasi to survive without him. Samson became their leader, and the Nefrasi have never forgiven Susenyos for what happened to them. Their anger toward him is therefore much older than Kidan's relationship with either vampire. Susenyos also knows that the Nefrasi are looking for the ancient artifacts because those artifacts are connected to the magical system governing vampires.

One of the most important developments early in the book is Susenyos discovering that he and Kidan are Mortal Vowed. A Mortal Vow is an extremely rare bond between a human and a vampire. It occurs when the human gives more than blood to the vampire and the vampire accepts responsibility for protecting that person's life. Once the bond is formed, the vampire can only drink the blood of the human to whom they are Mortal Vowed. If that human dies, the vampire is bound to die with them. Susenyos realizes that Kidan's blood is now the only blood he can consume. This explains why his relationship with Kidan has become physically and magically different from his relationships with other humans.

The Mortal Vow also changes the balance between Kidan and Susenyos. Neither of them wants to surrender control to the other, and both are suspicious enough to assume that the other might eventually use the bond against them. Nevertheless, they begin cooperating more directly. Susenyos needs information about the artifacts, while Kidan needs his knowledge of the Nefrasi and the vampires outside Uxlay. Their alliance becomes increasingly intimate even while both continue keeping secrets from one another. The author has described the central conflict between them in this book as one in which both Kidan and Susenyos are forced to confront their greatest fear: losing control.

Kidan's attempts to understand Adane House lead her to a forbidden philosophical text called Aseracti. The book teaches a philosophy centered on controlling and suppressing one's emotions. Kidan begins using its teachings because she believes her anger and grief are interfering with her ability to control the house. One of the techniques is called House Locking. Instead of allowing herself to feel everything that is happening around her, Kidan attempts to shut down her emotions and make herself more detached. The technique initially appears useful because she becomes more controlled and deliberate, but it also begins separating her from the people around her.

Aseracti also gives Kidan information that connects the history of her family to the ancient Sage artifacts. The mythology surrounding the artifacts goes back to Abyssi, the place said to have produced both the first vampire and the first Sage. The book's opening mythology describes Varos the Night Lion, the first vampire, emerging from the abyss during an eclipse. Another man, Yonas the Sun Bird, later emerges wearing a glowing mask and becomes the first Sage. The Mask, the Twin Blades, and the Ring are connected to these ancient powers and together form the three major Sage artifacts.

Kidan begins investigating her parents' deaths. She has spent most of her life knowing only that Mahlet Adane and Aman Yisak were killed when she and June were very young. She has deliberately avoided learning exactly what happened because knowing the details would make their deaths more immediate. Now, however, she searches Uxlay's records and finds information about the murder of her parents. Their deaths were not random. They were connected to the artifacts and to the work Mahlet had been doing before she died.

Kidan discovers that her mother had belonged to a secret organization known as the Dirt Diggers. The Dirt Diggers were searching for the Sage's artifacts because they believed the artifacts could be used to break the magical system that governs the relationship between vampires and humans. The existing system is based on the Three Binds. The First Bind controls vampires' access to human blood; the other Binds place additional restrictions on vampires and on the process of creating new vampires. The Dirt Diggers wanted to understand and ultimately dismantle this system.

This changes Kidan's understanding of her parents. Mahlet was not simply a scholar or historian who happened to die violently. She had been involved in an effort to change the entire structure of vampire society. Kidan also realizes that her parents' investigation is the reason the artifact hidden at Adane House became so important. Their work eventually put them in conflict with people at the highest levels of Uxlay.

At the same time, the political pressure against Adane House increases. Kidan is expected to prove that she can master the house while the other Houses debate whether Adane should retain its status. Slen Qaros and Yusef Umil remain closely connected to Kidan, although the relationships between the three become increasingly strained. Slen is particularly concerned with inheriting Qaros House and maintaining her family's position. Yusef is less interested in political power and becomes increasingly uncomfortable with the violence and manipulation surrounding their lives at Uxlay.

Samson continues searching for the artifact and manipulating the people around him. He is especially dangerous because he has no hesitation about torturing or killing people to get what he wants. His history with Susenyos also becomes clearer. Samson was once connected to Susenyos's old court, and his hatred of Susenyos comes from the destruction and abandonment of the Nefrasi. Samson's motivations also involve Talaa, the person he loved and lost. He wants access to the power of the Sage because he believes it could allow him to bring her back. This gives his pursuit of the artifacts a personal motivation rather than making it purely about political domination.

Kidan and Susenyos continue working together despite their mistrust. At several points they have to choose between cooperating and taking advantage of each other's weaknesses. Their relationship becomes increasingly romantic, although neither is willing to fully surrender control. Susenyos's Mortal Vow makes the situation even more complicated because his survival is now directly tied to Kidan.

Kidan eventually abandons the emotional suppression of House Locking in favor of another strategy known as Obsculion. Rather than simply shutting down her emotions, she begins deliberately hiding her intentions and allowing other people to believe they understand her motives. This becomes particularly important in her dealings with Samson. Kidan realizes that she cannot defeat him by openly fighting him, so she begins pretending that she may be willing to cooperate with him.

The conflict surrounding Slen also intensifies. Kidan has trusted Slen because Slen has repeatedly stood beside her despite their differences in family background and ambition. However, Slen's loyalty is complicated by her desire to inherit Qaros House and by the influence of her father. Kidan eventually discovers that Slen has been withholding information from her. This becomes one of the book's major betrayals.

Meanwhile, Yusef becomes increasingly involved in the political conflict. He wants to free his father, Omar Umil, who has been imprisoned, and his experiences at Uxlay have forced him to confront the fact that the institution he attends is responsible for much of the violence surrounding him. Yusef's relationship with Slen also deepens, but their opposing attitudes toward inheritance and political power create tension between them.

Samson eventually kills Etete, one of the people who has been important to Kidan. This is one of the moments that pushes Kidan further toward revenge. She becomes increasingly willing to use violence against anyone standing between her and her goals. Reader accounts consistently identify Etete's death as one of the major emotional turning points of the book.

Kidan's investigation into the past eventually reveals the truth about her parents' murder. She uses a forbidden ritual called Resurption, drawing on her mother's remains in order to witness events from the past. Through the ritual, she sees what happened when Mahlet and Aman were killed. The person ultimately responsible for ordering their deaths is Dean Faris. Mahlet's work with the Dirt Diggers and her efforts to uncover the Sage artifacts threatened the existing power structure at Uxlay, and Faris ordered the murder to prevent her from disrupting it.

This revelation gives Kidan a specific person to blame for the deaths she has spent years trying not to think about. Her anger toward Uxlay becomes much more personal. The institution was not merely complicit in the system that harmed her family; its leadership actively decided that her parents had to die.

Kidan also learns more about the purpose of the artifacts. The Mask, Twin Blades, and Ring are connected to the powers of the ancient Sage, and their destruction or manipulation can affect the Three Binds themselves. The artifacts are therefore capable of changing the balance between humans and vampires. This explains why the Nefrasi, Susenyos, the Dirt Diggers, and Uxlay's leadership have all been searching for them.

The political conflict at Uxlay eventually turns violent. Yusef is killed during a bombing connected to the escalating political struggle. His death devastates Kidan and Slen and leaves the surviving members of their group even more fractured. Yusef had been one of the few people in Kidan's life who consistently represented a less violent alternative to the politics of Uxlay. His death removes another person Kidan trusted.

Slen's betrayal becomes more serious after Yusef's death. She makes choices that Kidan interprets as another abandonment and eventually acts against Kidan's interests. The book repeatedly forces Kidan to confront the fact that people she loves can choose their own survival, ambition, or family legacy over loyalty to her. June's betrayal started this pattern, and Slen's actions reinforce it.

June's role becomes clearer through her own point-of-view chapters. She has not simply returned to Uxlay because she wants power or because she has stopped caring about Kidan. She has been pursuing her own plan involving the vampires, the artifacts, and the forces threatening them. June has knowledge about the compulsion marks used to control vampires and eventually reveals information that helps free Susenyos and other vampires from those constraints. Her actions have therefore been much more complicated than Kidan initially believed.

June also understands more about the artifacts than Kidan realizes. She knows that the struggle over the Mask and the other artifacts is tied to the larger history of the vampires and the Three Binds. Her decisions have been partly intended to draw attention away from Kidan, although from Kidan's perspective they look like repeated betrayals.

The conflict between Kidan and Samson reaches a point where Kidan deliberately allows Samson to believe she will cooperate with him. She knows that he wants the artifact and that he is willing to torture people to obtain it. Kidan therefore uses his obsession against him, hoping to get close enough to the artifact and the information she needs to defeat him.

Susenyos and Kidan continue their own secret alliance. Susenyos wants the artifacts for reasons of his own, particularly because he believes they are necessary to deal with the threat posed by Varos and the ancient vampire power behind the Nefrasi. Kidan is less interested in preserving the existing vampire system and more interested in protecting herself, June, and the people she has left.

The history of Varos becomes increasingly important. Varos is the first vampire, the being associated with the original breaking of the natural order. He has been connected to the ancient history of the Three Binds and is far more powerful than the vampires Kidan has encountered at Uxlay. The Binds have kept his influence contained, but the artifacts provide a way of interfering with those restraints.

Kidan eventually succeeds in mastering Adane House. She realizes that she cannot master it by becoming a perfect copy of her mother or by completely rejecting her heritage. Instead, she must accept the central quality that defines the house's legacy: revenge. Kidan has spent the book trying to control or suppress her anger, but she finally accepts that revenge is part of who she is and uses it to take command of the house.

The mastery gives Kidan considerably more control over Adane House, but it does not resolve the larger conflict. By this point she has lost Yusef, Etete, and much of her trust in Slen and June. She also knows that Dean Faris ordered her parents' deaths. Her desire to protect the house and her remaining loved ones has become inseparable from her desire for revenge.

The final conflict centers on the Mask artifact hidden within Adane House. Kidan has been warned that breaking the laws governing the artifact will have consequences. The house's laws are not simply rules that can be ignored. When a person violates one of them, the law can become attached to that person and impose a corresponding consequence.

Kidan ultimately chooses to break the law because she believes she needs the Mask to protect herself and the people she loves. She retrieves the artifact despite knowing that she is violating one of the most important rules governing the house.

The consequence is catastrophic. Breaking the artifact's law affects the First Bind itself. The First Bind, which has prevented vampires from freely feeding on humans, is shattered.

At the same time, Kidan is transformed. She becomes a vampire herself as a consequence of the broken law and the power released through the artifact. This means that the human heiress of Adane House is no longer human.

The transformation has an immediate effect on Kidan's relationship with Susenyos. Because of the magical consequences surrounding the law she absorbed, Susenyos's memories and feelings toward her are altered. He no longer remembers their relationship in the way he did before and instead feels hatred toward her. The Mortal Vow and everything they had built together are effectively torn apart. Reader accounts specifically identify this as one of the book's final devastating consequences: Kidan survives the transformation but loses Susenyos emotionally and magically at the same time.

Kidan is also expelled from Uxlay. She has broken one of the institution's most fundamental laws and is no longer the human heiress she was supposed to be. The political and magical consequences of her transformation make it impossible for her to remain within the university as she once did.

The breaking of the First Bind has consequences far beyond Kidan herself. Vampires are no longer subject to the same restriction on human blood. The ancient power associated with Varos is released, and Varos becomes aware that the Bind has been broken.

The epilogue returns to Varos, the first vampire. With the First Bind gone, he is once again able to taste human blood freely. The ancient vampire recognizes that the restraint holding his kind back has been broken and declares his intention to gather his forces. The conflict is no longer confined to Uxlay or the Adane family. Varos's awakening marks the beginning of an open war between vampires and humanity.

Kidan ends the book as a vampire, exiled from Uxlay, separated from Susenyos by the consequences of the law she broke, and having lost several of the people who had formed her closest circle. June remains alive, but the sisters' relationship is still fractured. GK is also alive but has been transformed into a vampire through the forbidden death-transformation process. Slen remains alive after betraying Kidan, while Yusef and Etete are dead. The First Bind has been broken, and Varos has begun preparing for war.