Not All That Glitters (2025) – approx. 75,000-word novel
A psychological thriller wrapped in mythic Western horror — where identity dissolves, and trust can kill.

Excerpt Two:
“The Judas Spark”

From Chapter Seventeen
What it showcases: Psychological collapse, guilt, grief, identity corruption, and unreliable perception — perfect thriller terrain.
(format differs from novel)

Elias sat in the dust, shoulders shaking.
His hands were covered in ash. In his palm, a pulsing shard of ore glowed orange—dim, alive, terrible.

“I’m sorry,” he sobbed.
“I heard his voice… Rafa. He told me—he told me to do it.”

His breath hitched.

“He said they’d come anyway. If I didn’t warn them, they’d kill us all.”

Nat’s voice trembled.

“Rafa would never tell you to betray us.
Bell-Mask did that to you.
What did you tell them?”

Elias’s voice came small.

“Everything.”

He looked up, eyes glassy, voice broken.

“I think he’s still in there, Nat. And I think I am too. Somewhere.”

He held out his palm like a child offering a broken toy.

“I just don’t know which part of me pulled the trigger.”

Magda hissed, “You betrayed us.”

But Nat raised a hand.

“No,” he said. “You know he’s not the traitor type.”

“Then kill me,” Elias begged.
“If there’s even a spark of that thing left in me—end it.”

Nat grabbed his shoulders.

“No. We’ll put that fire out some other way.”

Even as the words left his mouth, Nat wasn’t sure he believed them.

But something in Elias shifted—
a flicker of recognition behind his eyes.
Something human.
Something still his.

And in that breath between forgiveness and damnation, the shard in Elias’s hand flickered—

The Judas spark hadn’t gone out.
Not yet.
But maybe, just maybe—
it could be rewired.