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A Fantasy Romance Series

Riftguard by Tasha Meldan

A world where magic is earned by death. A city divided by more than a wall. A bond with the enemy she was raised to hate. 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

Cover reveal October 2026
Illustrated by @haileypuent.art

Book One · Riftguard Series

The Riftguard

Fantasy Romance Slow Burn Enemies to Lovers Adult
"And the Rifts break before us."

She died once. She came back marked by something the world forgot existed.

Saiya Wildthorn is a Riftguard — one of the Reborn, sworn to hold the line between the living world and the darkness that tears through it. The Rifts are endless. The monsters are relentless. And her Commander is the one man she has every reason to hate.

But the bond the Veil placed between them doesn't care about reasons.

Riftguard is an epic fantasy romance of found family, ancient power, and the slow, devastating pull of two people who were never meant to trust each other — and cannot seem to stop.

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Riftguard Book One
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The World

Welcome to Vaerngard

01
The Six Orders

Five Orders govern the power of the Riftguard. Solas commands fire. Naelwyn commands air. Tetherin commands earth. Caithra 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.

She and her Commander are the only Riftguards in living memory to carry two Orders. One of those marks 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 over 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 Rifts 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 from the fragments myself I no longer recognised. The pandemic changed everyone's lives, including mine. I became a new mother at the start of it and it was isolating as much as it was a blessing. I lost friends and loved ones as many of us did. I saw people close in on themselves across the distance we had to keep. I lost my job and identity and self-worth I'd built so carefully over so many years quietly came undone. In a new town, a new home, with a newborn, I was left with the questions that follow a loss of self I couldn't quite explain: What 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 had to find out what she was made of when the ground disappeared beneath her.

The rest is what happens when you listen to the people who believed in you — in your ability to create, to write, to follow your characters into the dark, and to trust that something worth finding is waiting there.

The Creative Team
Line/Copy Editor  — Cameron-Rose Neil
Cover Illustrator  — Hailey Puent
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 Rifts.

The Citadel has stood for over eight hundred years, since the first Rifts opened. 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 under the protection of the rune walls surrounding it, created five hundred years ago. Those inside the city are known as Highwards, while those who live outside the protection of the walls are known as Lowwards. They trade and worship and argue about politics. There is a divide between the two that has grown over the years. On top of the discord between the two classes, they also 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 dark creatures of monsterous shape and form. 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 eight 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 Crown's name from behind walls they have never had to defend themselves. They are not without power, they fund the Riftguard 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 the city with the Crown. 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 of the Riftguards
Order Element Commander
DourWaterKeela Rowan
AwelAirLirael Voan
TirnEarthRook Feldren
TanethFireTayven Halverin
NoxShadowCorin Dravehall
The SixthUnknownUnknown
Key Locations
  • Vaerngard · The Citadel
  • Verinna · The City
  • The Breakline · Training Ground
  • The Spine · Final Trial
  • The Rifts · The Breach
Squad X-01
  • Kael Dorn · First Rank
  • Loras Veylen · Second Rank
  • Eryn Solmere · Third Rank
  • Saiya Wildthorn · Cadet
  • Lian Elwyn · Cadet
  • Kallen Rusk · Cadet
  • Tarn Mercer · Cadet
  • Deyric Hollan · Cadet
  • Veyra Morn · Cadet
Miranova House
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