Book1 of the Obsidian Mirror Trilogy
Lyra Holt is climbing the walls. Seven months since their last expedition and she hasn't left the county. Her husband Rowan is staring at bridge blueprints he barely sees. Then an email arrives — coordinates in the Peruvian cloud forest, an impossible Aztec temple, a sealed chamber, and an artefact that local communities have feared for generations.
They're on a flight within the week.
What they find deep in the jungle defies archaeology, logic, and the laws of thermodynamics. The Temple of Itztlacoliuhqui — god of misfortune, frost, and divine punishment — is not empty. It is 'waiting'. Its chambers test not only their strength but also their trust in each other: tile bridges that require perfect synchronisation over bottomless drops, riddles from a living stone jaguar, and sacrifices more personal than either of them expected.
At the frozen heart of the temple, they find the Obsidian Mirror. They carry it out into the world.
And then Lyra sees the warning hidden on its surface — carved in archaic Nahuatl, five hundred years ago, by priests who were frightened — and realises the expedition isn't over. It has barely started.
March 8th is coming. The mirror's new owner isn't answering her phone. And the balance-moment waits for no one.
"The Obsidian Mirror" is an adult adventure novel of archaeology, ancient power, and the extraordinary strength of two people who face every darkness together.
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"The Obsidian Mirror" is an adult adventure-romance set in 2026. Lyra Holt, a British archaeologist, and her husband Rowan Ashfall, a structural engineer, are pulled from their quiet Hampshire life by an email from colleague Marcus Webb, who has been approached by a private collector to retrieve an artefact from a remote Peruvian jungle site. The preliminary surveys point to something impossible: an Aztec temple complex deep in the cloud forest near the Bolivian border — thousands of kilometres outside the Aztec Empire's known reach.
With their Peruvian guide Carlos, they hack through the Tambopata jungle to find the Temple of Itztlacoliuhqui — the Aztec god of frost, misfortune, and penance — a brooding, basalt pyramid radiating unnatural cold. Inside, the temple tests them through a series of escalating puzzles designed not merely to obstruct, but to measure the quality of their partnership. They solve riddles from a living stone jaguar, navigate shifting tile bridges over deadly gaps in perfect synchronisation, and sacrifice their most prized personal possessions — including their wedding rings — before a final platform mechanism forces them to trust each other across a void to retrieve the prize: the 'Obsidian Mirror', a ritual artefact of extraordinary power sealed by Aztec priests five hundred years ago.
During the retrieval, Lyra receives a vision burned into her by the mirror itself: a warning in archaic Nahuatl — "Let not the mirror face the sun at balance-moment, lest the frozen god remember his theft of fire." The next zenith passage — when the sun casts no shadow at the temple's latitude — falls on March 8th, just four weeks away.
They hand the mirror to its new owner, the enigmatic Dame Helena Ashworth, a collector who reveals an unsettling depth of knowledge about Itztlacoliuhqui. Back in Hampshire, Lyra grows increasingly convinced that Helena understands March 8th not as a threat to avoid, but as an opportunity to activate the mirror's power. Her attempts to warn Helena and Marcus go unanswered. The tension builds through the final weeks of February until, on March 8th at 5:47 PM — the moment of zenith passage in Peru — Lyra and Rowan hold their breath at their kitchen window. The moment passes. Nothing happens. The world turns on.
76 pages
23,951 words
Illustrated
*Contains adult content. Recommended for readers 18+*
