The Night Trilogy · Book 1
The Origin of the Night
E. S. Nebelung
Dark Fantasy · Cosmic Horror · Lost Magic
A light in the wardrobe. A brother who is a stranger. A world that has long been waiting for Dante.
German-language edition
II
The Night Trilogy tells of a world in decay. Two forces that shape its reality. And people whose origin decides whether they endure.
Dante lives a withdrawn life in an attic, plagued by nightmares and the persistent feeling of not belonging in his own world. When one day an eerie light appears in his wardrobe and tears him into a strange world, that feeling becomes a question he perhaps should never have found an answer to.
On Onnterra he encounters the impossible: Rai, a boy whose face resembles his own in a disturbing way. Yet the two could hardly be more different. While Rai is at home in this strange world, Dante discovers more and more traces of his own past in a place he has never set foot in before.
Together they fall into the sights of a power that has been searching for Dante for years. Their flight leads them through a world where magic and ancient technology merge — to forgotten cities, extinct empires and ever closer to the darkness that has haunted Dante's dreams since childhood.
But the more he learns about himself, the more dangerous another question becomes: what remains of a person when even their origin does not belong to them?
And as Onnterra heads towards catastrophe, Dante must decide whether to flee from the truth — or to determine for himself what it makes of him.
01
An inexplicable glow opens Dante's way into another world — foreign, dangerous and yet strangely familiar.
02
Rai wears Dante's face, but not his life. What binds the two reaches further back than their memories — and deeper than they can grasp.
03
Onnterra is no fairy-tale realm. It is a world in decay — beautiful, cruel and shot through with a magic that demands its price.
III
Der Ursprung der Nacht
Chapter 1
Das Licht im Schrank
The novel is currently published in German. Below is the original opening of Chapter 1.
Dantes Blick folgte dem magentafarbenen Schimmer der gläsernen Steppe bis zum Horizont. Dort raste eine schwarze, wabernde Masse auf ihn zu wie ein lebendiger Sturm. Der Duft von Adlerholz und Petrichor schwand in einer modrigen, erstickenden Schwüle. Ein tiefes Grollen hallte über die Halme, während der riesige Schatten die Welt verschluckte. Aus den Rauchschwaden schälte sich ein massiger Panzer, durchzogen von azurblauen, pulsierenden Adern. Darunter acht Beine, die sich lautlos und präzise in den Boden rammten und der eigenen Kolossalität spotteten. Das Wesen hielt inne. Die Welt erstarrte. Der Knochenmann erschien. Die klammen Lichter in seinem Schädel richteten sich auf Dante.
»Die Lösung liegt in der faulenden Wüste.«
Einen Herzschlag lang herrschte Stille. Dann setzte sich die Zeit wieder in Bewegung. Die Dunkelheit riss alles mit sich. Asche und verbranntes Holz füllten Dantes Lungen. Frost lähmte seine Glieder. Nadelspitze Stiche trieben ihm den Atem aus, während schemenhafte Klauen aus dem Qualm schossen, auf den Boden donnerten und nur fingerbreit vor ihm zum Stehen kamen. Sie reichten bis in die zerrissenen Wolken.
Dante riss die Augen auf. Er lag voll bekleidet auf seinem Bett, das Hemd klebte ihm schweißnass an der Brust. Über ihm ragten die geschwungenen Balken des Dachstuhls auf, keine Wolken aus Asche. Die Müdigkeit in seinen grauen Augen wich nicht; sie saß tiefer als bloßer Schlafmangel. Es war sinnlos, weiter zu grübeln.
IV
Not every world reveals itself to those who enter it.
Transparent blades stretch to the horizon, ringing in the wind like countless tiny bells. Yet for Dante the Glass Steppe is more than a natural wonder: here his oldest dreams meet reality — and something beneath it begins to stir.
In the northwest of Onnterra, the day ends without the night beginning.
A dark grey veil lies over the Twilight Forest and the twin cities of Mane and Nokto. No ray of sunlight can pierce it. Beneath it the world lingers in a pale dusk of orange and violet — timeless, damp and melancholy.
Magic has many colours. The light that answers Dante is silver.
At first it is little more than a faint flicker at his fingertips. Yet its power flows from a source older than any teaching of Onnterra. It neither burns nor transforms — it reaches for the very structures of the world.
An orange light appears in an empty wardrobe and offers Dante his only way out. Beyond it waits Onnterra — a world he has never set foot in, and which nonetheless feels more familiar than anything he leaves behind.
V
E. S. Nebelung has been writing since the age of ten. His passion is the fantastic in all its forms — the abysses of horror, the endless reaches of science fiction and the wonders of strange fantasy worlds.
In the Night Trilogy centred on Dante, he weaves epic scale with philosophical depth: a coming-of-age novel in the guise of an epic, in which heroes exist not despite the darkness, but because of it.
Born on All Souls' Day in Thuringia, the author now lives in Switzerland — convinced that fantasy may be heroic again.
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VII
The Night Trilogy · Book 1
Dark Fantasy · Cosmic Horror · Lost Magic
German-language edition