The Library
The Other Kingdom
Gryphons, not dragons. Fliers, not riders. Navarre's four-hundred-year enemy across the border — who turn out to be fighting the exact same war, and become the only allies worth having. Funny how that works.
Navarre's enemy for four hundred years — the smaller kingdom across the eastern border, where they bond gryphons instead of dragons and call their riders fliers. Almost everything you're told about them is Navarre propaganda. Here's what's actually true: the venin have been carving up Poromish towns the entire time, both kingdoms have been fighting the same dark and blaming each other, and when Zolya falls and Suniva burns, the fliers who survive don't run — they defect straight into the Aretian revolution. The four-hundred-year enemy becomes the frontline. And yeah, we spent the back half of the book apologising for ever rooting against them.
Poromiel's Own
The alliance runs on fliers — Syrena at Resson, Tecarus and his forge, Maren and her gryphon Daja in Violet's own squad. But the one who walks straight into Violet's world, and ours, is this one.
Grasslands, sea-cities and a flight academy on the cliffs — most of it now the frontline nobody in Navarre would admit existed.
A border trading post most riders had never heard of — three hundred civilians, dirt roads, a clock tower. Then four venin and their wyvern arrived, and it became the field where riders and fliers first fought side by side, and where Liam Mairi didn't come home. Navarre called it 'Poromish unrest' and moved the trade route.
Enter Resson
The fliers' Basgiath — the cliff-and-river academy at Cliffsbane that made every gryphon flier there ever was. Its destruction by the venin is the hinge that scatters the fliers out of their homeland and into an alliance with the riders they'd spent four centuries hating. Old enemies, suddenly homeless together.
Enter Zolya
A seaside city of white marble and mercantile wealth on Poromiel's southern coast — seat of Viscount, later King, Tecarus. When Cliffsbane fell, a third of the displaced fliers fled here; Tecarus sheltered them, trained them, and lent his luminary to the revolution once Violet lit up his gaming arena.
Enter Cordyn
The old Poromish capital, and the atrocity that reframes the whole war: an entire city and its queen destroyed by just twelve venin. It topples old Poromiel into Tecarus's kingship and the alliance with Navarre — proof of how fast the dark moves when nobody's allowed to say it's real.
Enter Suniva
The great set-piece of Onyx Storm, where the venin war goes total, Theophanie finally falls, and the squad pays in blood. The city that proves the alliance can actually win — at a cost we are still, to be clear, not fine about.
Enter DraithusWe're Caffeine and Curses. The Library started as my design research — I can't put Poromiel on a shirt without knowing a full drift is seven gryphons — so we keep the notes here where everyone can use them. The pages are fan-made, not official; the licensed designs are in the shop.
Officially licensed
New designs, new Library pages, and the occasional unhinged reread — straight to your inbox. No propaganda, no corporate nonsense. Even the fliers would defect for this.
Admit one obsessive reader.
You're on the list — welcome to the Library. ✦
One email when it's worth crossing the border for. Not a byte more.
The useful stuff.
The other kingdom on the map — Navarre's rival across the eastern border, gryphons and fliers instead of dragons and riders. For four hundred years it's the enemy every Navarrian cadet is trained to fight. It's also, quietly, the place taking the real war's first hits while both crowns pretend that war isn't happening. Short version: not the villain. Never was.
That's the four-hundred-year story, and it's a lie of convenience. Poromiel was never the real threat — the venin have been carving up its towns the whole time, and both kingdoms were fighting the same dark while blaming each other. When it counts, the fliers cross the border and fight beside the riders. The enemy was always the thing neither crown would name.
No — the Library is a fan-made companion, not endorsed by Rebecca Yarros or her publishers. The merch in our shop is the officially-licensed part; the wiki's just us, obsessed.
The Library is our fan-made love letter to The Empyrean. The officially-licensed pieces live in the shop.
THE LIBRARY
FAN · MADEDESIGNED · AUSTRALIASHIPPED · WORLDWIDE
The Empyrean is © Rebecca Yarros. The Library is an unofficial, fan-made companion — not affiliated with or endorsed by the author. Artwork © Caffeine and Curses.
Here be spoilers
This whole place is written for people who already fell in — so we spoil freely, name names, and never explain the lore. That's kind of the point. Not caught up yet? Wander gently.
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