Shadowfall Is What Happens When Magic Burns

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Oftentimes, books aren’t what you expect. Sometimes… they’re worse. Sometimes, they’re better. In the best times they catch you off guard—pulling you in slow, soft as smoke—then they burn everything clean. You close the last page not with satisfaction, but with something feral scratching inside your chest. Shadowfall by C.K. Franziska didn’t ask for permission. It slipped into my currently reading pile like a secret and left like a storm. A dark fantasy drenched in power, grief, and longing, this isn’t fiction for the fainthearted—it’s a beautifully brutal edition that sets the past on fire and dares you to look away.

This isn’t a review. Not yet. These are the ashes it left behind.

Title: Shadowfall (Veil of Fire, 2)

Author: C.K. Franziska

Publisher: Independently Published

Genre: Fantasy, Witchy Reads, Romantasy

Release Date: May 23, 2025

Pages: 337

Star Rating: 4.5 stars

Spice Rating: 1 chili pepper

Shadowfall wasn’t what I was expecting.

Well—sort of. I’d read Dreamcursed. I’d fallen hard for Franziska’s unflinching prose, her tangled characters, her slow-building, sharp-edged fantasy. So I knew I’d love Shadowfall. And I did. Gods, I did. By the time I closed the book, I sat dead silent, staring into the abyss and questioning everything I thought I knew about the Veil of Fire series. Every thread. Lie. And every unspoken truth scorched across the pages.

But I’m getting ahead of myself.

Let’s go back to the beginning. Before the flames. Before the ruin. And, before the magic broke.

“Sometimes, all you can do is let the darkness in.”

When we open Shadowfall, we pick up right where Dreamcursed (check out my full review) left us—dangling on the edge of a promise, a betrayal, and a magic we still don’t understand. The transition between books is seamless, a whisper instead of a jolt. But as the pages turn, the seams start to split. Something doesn’t fit. And the longer you read, the more intentional it feels like Franziska wants you to notice. Wants you to ask questions you don’t have the answers to yet. It easily picks up the narrative thread; you forget how much danger you were in last time. But that’s the trap, isn’t it?

I won’t give anything away—not really. But know this: the monsters you expect aren’t always the ones you get. And the villains? They wear softer faces than you’d think.

As this slow unraveling continues, you’re lulled into a false sense of security.

“Nocturna Phobica.”

And then there’s the prose. Oh, the prose. It doesn’t just tell the story. The prose is gorgeous—dangerously so. The cadence, the clarity, the way each phrase curls like smoke around your throat. The words don’t just read; they sing. Flowing like a lullaby, wrapping around your ribs, cradling you just long enough to forget that you’re standing in the fire. That’s the magic of Shadowfall: its beauty disarms you before the blade strikes.

Franziska doesn’t write like she’s building a world—she writes like she’s conjuring one. You are wrapped in the language, lulled into security, held close by the beauty of it all… until she breaks you. It’s velvet-lined destruction—a soft caress followed by a strike to the heart.

“I think of the words I never spoke. I wish I could have told him how much he turned my world upside down.”

But Shadowfall isn’t just about beautiful writing. It’s about what lies beneath it—what burns under the surface. This book carries a thematic weight that haunts. Power, sacrifice, and the brutal reality of what it means to choose wrong when the world demands something right. It explores grief not as a plot point, but as a place—an aching landscape the characters are forced to navigate. This isn’t a fantasy that coddles. This is fiction that cuts deep and doesn’t flinch from the wound.

And the characters? They’re slippery shadows, all of them. No one stays who you think they are. You will place your trust in the wrong hands, over and over again, and that’s the point. Shadowfall asks you to question your loyalty—to unravel your own assumptions alongside the story’s unraveling truths. The morally gray? These characters live in it, bathe in it, bleed in it. They are walking contradictions; you will love them anyway, maybe because of it.

“Light and dark, movement and stillness, growth and rest. One cannot be without the other.”

But here’s where the water runs a little cold.

And while I loved it—don’t get me wrong—there’s one thread that didn’t pull me entirely over the edge of that waterfall of adoration. One thing that held me just shy of five-star free-fall: Balor. After everything, he’s still a wimp. And I don’t say that lightly. Even when he flickers with potential, with that aching promise of more—of stepping into something bigger—he falters. Again. Seeing that stunted arc in a world where everything else is evolving is frustrating. Where stakes rise, prose burns, and characters bleed… Balor just trembles in the corner. You want to shake him. To scream, stand up already! Lock your knees! But he doesn’t. And that ache—of what he could be but isn’t—is the one shadow I couldn’t quite swallow.

Despite my frustration with Balor (here’s hoping Balor grows a backbone in the next book). This second installment doesn’t just raise the stakes—it shatters the structure. If Dreamcursed was the match, Shadowfall is the firestorm. It pulls the rug out from under the lore you thought you understood and sets everything alight. There’s a shift in the series here—a change in tone, in tempo, in truth. Suddenly, what you thought was a story about resistance becomes something far more layered. More dangerous. More human.

“I was claimed by a Nightmare, okay? Story time is over!”

So who is Shadowfall for? The readers who want to be wrecked. The ones who crave the soft horror of realization. If you’re someone who reads to feel—who wants to be haunted by the pages, who enjoys unraveling a puzzle that stares back—you’ve found your next obsession. But if you’re looking for clean answers, for heroes without shadows or endings without pain… this book won’t hold your hand. It will light the match and leave you watching the flames.

Make sure you grab Shadowfall, it will be available on Kindle Unlimited on May 23, 2025.

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