Onyx Storm

Onyx Storm is the third novel of the Empyrean series, released by Red Tower Books on 21 January 2025. It moves Violet Sorrengail and Xaden Riorson off the continent that the first two books were fought over, because the answers they need are not written down anywhere in Navarre. As in the earlier volumes, the story is told from Violet's point of view, and it follows directly on from the close of Iron Flame.

The political shape of the world has changed by this point. Navarre and Poromiel, together with the leaders of the revolution in Navarre's province of Tyrrendor, have negotiated an alliance against the venin, the magic-wielders whose advance nobody has been able to stop, and the agreement is fragile enough to break over one more bad decision. Violet and Xaden travel south with allies and dragons, looking for more irids of the kind that Andarna belongs to, for anything that might slow what Xaden is becoming, and for anyone willing to fight beside them.

The journey turns up family history rather than an easy solution. The group obtains manuscripts written by Violet's father, Xaden meets the mother he has not seen since he was a child, and the alliances they win are paid for partly by members of the party. What they find ties the present war to decisions made by people who are no longer alive to answer for them.

It is the series' travel volume, and that is what separates it from the two books before it. The college, the quadrant and the wing rivalries give way to a smaller group on unfamiliar ground, and the new characters who join the story have been living with the continent's history rather than studying it. Yarros has described the Empyrean as a five-book sequence, so the third volume extends the war rather than settling it.