Devorah Leah Barrocas has a new FF dark fantasy out: Angelic Wrath.
Nyx escaped the man who forged her into a weapon. She survived the trials meant to break her, discovered a power she was never supposed to possess, and learned that nearly everything she believed about herself was a lie.
But freedom does not come without consequence.
Haunted by visions of a frozen land and the parents she never knew, Nyx follows a trail toward answers buried long before she was born. What she finds is far greater than the truth of her own past. An ancient power has been scattered across the realms, and if restored, it could undo the order that has kept demons on thrones and angels in chains.
But, those who rule from the darkness know her name.
And as the boundaries between realms begin to fracture, Nyx must decide whether she is willing to become the very thing they have always feared.
She was raised to serve the darkness.
Now she may be the only one powerful enough to end its reign.
Warnings: Graphic violence, gore, death and murder, torture, captivity, abuse, trauma, blood, body horror, sexual content, BDSM themes, religious/demonic imagery, and themes of death and resurrection.
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Excerpt
The icy mountains breathe. They swell before me, then draw inward again, wrinkling like old fruit left too long in the frost.
My name comes from everywhere, in different pitches.
Nyx. Nyx. Nyyyyyx.
An owl the size of a fortress drops from the white sky and lands upon a peak that was absent a moment before. Its feathers are hundreds of small silver keys. They chime softly as it turns its head all the way around, several times, almost as though its head doesn’t connect to its body at all. No creature should be able to do such a thing. It blinks one eye, then another. When it speaks, the voice comes from behind me.
“You are running in the wrong direction,” it says, sounding disappointed yet not unkind. “Everyone does at first.”
I run, though I cannot say if I flee or pursue. My breath should cloud the air, but when I exhale, chunks of honeycomb tumble from my mouth and bounce away like dice. There is no proof that I’m breathing at all except the sweetness on my tongue. The cold burrows deep, knitting itself through my ribs, threatening to bring me to my knees.
A dark, insistent voice coils through my mind, but it doesn’t sound like Wisp. It sounds like me gargled through water. Run, Nyx. Faster.
Ahead, a figure stands in the snow, waiting with the patience of a rock.
My father.
No, not my father. Ashmedai’s face, but his eyes are mirrors with no reflection. Then his edges blur, and suddenly there are two figures where one stood. They don’t have faces I recognize, yet I know with certainty they are my parents, my true parents.
Then they turn into a pair of wolves. One silver white as fresh snow, the other dark as wet earth. They sit side by side impossibly still. Warmth radiates from them in waves that should not exist in this frozen place, a heat that feels like being held, being home. Like the sensation of arms I never felt but somehow still miss.
My chest aches with recognition.
Now behind them stands the old man with a weathered face, his back hooked, wrapped in furs that shift though there is no wind. Ashmedai is gone entirely, or perhaps he was never really there at all.
The owl shrinks as it swoops down and lands on the old man’s shoulder. The keys jangle a pattern that sounds almost like words. Almost like come, come, come.
The old man opens his mouth to speak, and instead of words, smoke pours out.
“She needs to come,” the owl says, in the voice of an old man. “We’ve been calling. Can’t you hear us calling?”
Ashmedai reappears before me, and his mirror eyes ripple. In their reflection I see the same place over and over: ice fields stretching to forever. A specific cold. A familiar cold. This is the cold from which I was born.
Rakefet.
I try to speak, but the mountains hum a lullaby that turns my words into butterflies that flutter away.
The owl winks.
—I jolt upright, gasping, the weight of blankets pinning me back to the world of the living. Gone is the wind howling over ice, replaced by the quiet crackle of dying embers in the hearth. Restless shadows shift across the walls as if they remember what I dreamed. My heart still pounds, each beat a lingering echo of flight, of pursuit, of something unfinished.
This dream again. The same dream, night after night, with small variations but always ending the same way. Always the owl. Always that old man. Always in Rakefet.
I drag a hand through my hair, damp with sweat. It’s far too long now, falling past my ears in unruly strands. It needs cutting.
You’re not truly considering a trip to Rakefet, are you? Wisp’s annoyance curls through my mind.
The land of ice and ruin. But my parents, my real parents, could they still be there? Alive, waiting all these years? The thought ignites something reckless in me.
I think I must, I answer, swinging my legs over the bedside. The cold stone floor prickles at my feet, waking me further. If there’s even the slightest chance my parents are alive . . .
Delightful, Wisp mutters. A sentimental pilgrimage to the land of eternal, damnable cold. Tell me, are you seeking answers or simply a faster way to rid yourself of this world?
If I don’t do this, I will never rest easy. I cross the room to the small looking glass, where my unfortunate reflection stares back at me. And besides, I add, reaching for my blade, I’m far too stubborn to allow myself to die this young.
I take my pipe from the bedside table, pack the bowl with verita, and touch it to the candle flame. The first pull burns sweet across my tongue. I trap the stem between my teeth and lift the blade to my hair.
Stubborn, definitely stubborn. Wisp huffs.
I begin chopping my hair with the pipe clenched between my teeth, and uneven chunks fall to the floor. Each cut severs something more than just length. It feels as though a past, weaker version of myself is getting stripped away.
Weeks have passed since Kal’s name was etched into the growing roots of the lost. Weeks that sit on me like years. In those first days, I burned. I rose before the suns and drove my blade against the practice post until my palms split and the wood went dark with my blood. I would train. I would grow stronger. I would make them pay. I said it to the dawn. I said it to Wisp. I said it to the ceiling above my cot when sleep would not come.
Author Bio
Devorah Barrocas was raised in a religious Jewish community where Kabbalistic mysticism was part of daily life, teaching her early that the universe was layered, and that beneath every word and symbol lived something older and more powerful than the surface suggested. Though she no longer practices those beliefs, she remains deeply drawn to the lore, symbols, entities, and cosmology of Kabbalah, which became part of the foundation for her debut novel, Demonic Reign.
A lifelong artist, Devorah first understood herself through image, atmosphere, character design, and visual storytelling. Because of her dyslexia, she never imagined writing would become part of her creative life. It was only later that she discovered a love for fiction and began bringing both sides of her creativity together, incorporating her own art and illustration into the worlds she creates.
Demonic Reign is an adult sapphic dark fantasy that reimagines mystical tradition through a lens of power, myth, violence, identity, and moral complexity. Her stories are built for readers who want worlds that feel genuinely other and characters who feel painfully real. As a member of the LGBTQIA+ community, she writes queer lives and sapphic arcs not as subplots, but as the heart of the story—creating the characters she once needed to find on the page.