A Journey into the Dark Romantasy World of Penumbria
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Penumbria grew slowly at first.
When I began writing, all I wanted was one scene. Because of that, there was only enough world for that scene to exist.
A stream flowed outside a magical veil, beneath which the last survivors had found protection. Nearby, a crossroads had become a village out of necessity. It was a small place held together by routine, familiarity and a peace that had lasted far too long.
That was all there was.
Middle Crossroads and its little stream.
The bakery. The blacksmith. The training grounds. And at the far end of the village, a cabin where a former general, an old healer and an orphan lived together beneath the illusion of peace.
I did not yet know how far the road beyond that cabin would reach.
But once I decided to tell the whole story, the dark romantasy world of Penumbria began to grow around it.
The village opened into rolling hills scattered with abandoned farmhouses. Roads wound towards a mysterious capital. Mountains rose across the horizon, guarding secrets older than the people living beneath them. Beyond those mountains waited a dark realm that did not merely threaten the peace of Penumbria – it wanted to consume everything.
Then, in contrast to all that darkness, the Silver Forest came to life in the far east.
Soon there was enough danger to make me question some of my own choices, but also so much beauty left to explore. One city was carved into the rock of a mountain. Another rose in the south, filled with whitewashed walls and colourful flowers. Villages carried old stories, ruins concealed forgotten truths and places that appeared safe often had secrets of their own.
What began beside one quiet stream had become an immersive fantasy world of divided realms, ancient powers and roads leading into places no sensible traveller should enter.
Fortunately, my characters have never been particularly sensible.
Mapping Light and Darkness in a Dark Romantasy World
As the fantasy worldbuilding expanded, I realised that Penumbria could not remain one uninterrupted kingdom.
The realms needed borders.
One place needed to represent safety, even if that safety could never last. Other places needed to conceal secrets. Some locations could exist openly on the map, while others had to remain hidden until the characters discovered them.
A place can be real long before the reader is allowed to see it.
In Fearbound, the first book of the Realms of Penumbria trilogy, we enter the human kingdom and begin the journey into Maloon.
Maloon was the first realm born in my mind, although I must admit that, when it comes to the origin of Penumbria, it may have been the last to exist.
By the time Sinia crosses its border, the realm has already fallen beneath the rule of a Demon known only as the Darkest Demon. His elemental monsters roam the land, while the Great Demons who follow him help hold an entire kingdom beneath his power.
Maloon is not simply dark. It is a realm that remembers what it was before.
Its abandoned villages and empty farmhouses are evidence that ordinary lives once filled those places. People worked the land, travelled the roads and believed there would always be another morning. That absence gave the darkness more weight. Maloon was not born empty – it was emptied.
That is what turns Sinia’s journey through the realm into something close to a suicide mission.
She is not entering an unknown wilderness untouched by civilisation. She is walking through the remains of a kingdom that has already lost.
But where there is darkness, there must also be light.
And somewhere within the mountains, hope is still waiting to be found.
I will not say more. We came here to explore the world of Penumbria, after all, not to leave Fearbound spoilers scattered across the road.
The Darkness Beyond the Mountains
Another realm lies beyond the mountains of Penumbria.
In Fearbound, you catch only glimpses of it. You feel its influence before you are allowed to cross its borders. But in Ragebound, the second book of the trilogy, I finally give you the full tour.
It is not a welcoming one.
At the heart of the Demon Realm stands its dark mansion, a seat of old power, old traditions and even older despair. Across the plains, hot air rises from cracks in the earth. The forests are dead, yet they have never stopped bleeding. Danger lives in the landscape itself, as though the realm has absorbed every cruel act committed within it and learned how to repeat them.
This is where Ashan was made into the weapon he became.
Because of that, the Demon Realm needed to mirror him.
It had to hold his violence, but also the suffering beneath it. It had to feel powerful and wounded at the same time. Beautiful in places, perhaps, but never gentle. It needed to explain something about him without excusing what he had done.
The gothic darkness of this realm does not come from shadows alone. It comes from traditions that survived because nobody dared to challenge them. Cruelty became culture. Power became permission. And beneath it all remained an endless appetite for more.
Yet desire lives there too.
Not soft desire. Not the kind that asks politely or leaves without taking something with it. This is a realm where hunger and power have always stood dangerously close together.
In Balanceburned, the third and final book of the Realms of Penumbria, we descend even further. Beneath the familiar darkness waits a pool that holds dangers of its own, proving that even after three books, Penumbria still had places it had not shown us.
And there is more buried in the Demon Realm’s past than the trilogy reveals.
I am looking forward to returning there in the planned Penumbria pre-sequel, where some of that history, and the choices that shaped it, will finally come into the light.
Or at least something resembling it.
The True Light and the False
If readers could choose one place in Penumbria in which to remain, most of them would choose the Silver Forest.
I understand why.
The Silver Forest is ancient enough to have developed a presence of its own. Voices drift through its silvered canopy. Light breaks between the leaves. Wisdom and peace appear to live among the roots, untouched by the darkness spreading across the other realms.
It is a place where love can bloom.
But this is still dark fantasy, and appearances should never be trusted too quickly.
In Fearbound, we enter the Silver Forest out of desperation. Despite the dappled light falling through its branches, not everyone is welcome there.
A Demon should never touch its soil.
The Silver Forest may represent hope, but it is not defenceless. It has claws for anyone who enters without invitation. Its beauty is not weakness, and its peace was never created by innocence alone.
That hostility comes from a past almost nobody remembers.
Before the realms took the shape we know, there was a fourth realm. A place once powerful enough to rule the others, and dangerous enough that its return could change everything.
The Light City finally emerges in Balanceburned.
After so much darkness, its name may sound like a promise. But light is not always the same as goodness. Sometimes it reveals. Sometimes it blinds. And sometimes it merely makes cruelty easier to see.
The final book shows exactly what this lost realm is capable of and why some parts of Penumbria were hidden for so long.
But this is where I will stop.
Spoilers, and so. 😅
A World That Began with One Scene
When I look at the map of Penumbria now, it is strange to remember that none of it existed when I wrote that first scene.
There were no divided fantasy realms. No Demon Realm beyond the mountains. No ancient Silver Forest whispering through its canopy. No Light City waiting for its return.
There was only Middle Crossroads.
A little stream.
A magical veil.
And three people living in a cabin at the far end of a village, unaware of how much larger their world was about to become.
Perhaps that is one of my favourite things about creating fantasy worlds. They do not always arrive complete. Sometimes they reveal themselves in the same way they are later revealed to the reader: one path, one secret and one dangerous border at a time.
Penumbria grew because the story needed somewhere to go.
Then it continued growing because every new place carried another question. What happened here? Who lived here before? Why was this realm divided from the others? What had been hidden, and who benefited from keeping it forgotten?
By the end, the world had become more than the setting for Sinia and Ashan’s story. Its realms held their own histories, wounds and unfinished business.
Some of those secrets have now been revealed across Fearbound, Ragebound and Balanceburned.
Others are still waiting.
I hope you enjoyed this journey through the dark romantasy world of the Realms of Penumbria. I am looking forward to guiding you through the next fantasy world I have created.
And later, we will return to Penumbria.
This time, I will show you how the realms were truly made – in a prequel that may cause you to reconsider everything you think you know.
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