Meet the architects, kings, fools, lovers, and pieces behind the events of the Through the Fire saga.

SPOILER-FREE · CHARACTER GUIDE

JADE — THE CO-ARCHITECT

She didn’t inherit the kingdom. She helped design it.

STRATEGIST · CONFIDANTE · BELIEVER

Jade has spent much of her life believing the world is badly designed.

Belial offers her the opportunity to rebuild it.

Intelligent, composed, ambitious, and fiercely loyal, Jade doesn’t merely stand beside the Architect. She studies people, chooses alliances, manages personalities and helps transform an ancient dream into a modern political reality.

She believes in what they are building.

Perhaps even more dangerously, she believes in him.

But Jade understands other people far better than she understands the place she occupies in Belial’s life.

And the closer their vision comes to completion, the harder it becomes to separate devotion from jealousy, purpose from possession, and the woman helping move the pieces from another piece on the board.

This feels much more accurate than simply “the woman beside the Architect.” She’s genuinely a co-architect. The manuscript even has her assuming operational command after Lemuria and dividing their influence geographically while recognizing that Belial has assigned everyone a position.

BELIAL — THE ARCHITECT

Nothing was ever left to chance.

FALLEN ANGEL · STRATEGIST · KINGMAKER

Belial does not simply manipulate people.

He builds worlds around them.

Kingdoms. Religions. Relationships. Political movements. Even identities.

Ancient and extraordinarily patient, he understands that the strongest prison rarely looks like one. Give people the right dream, the right enemy, the right lover or the right version of themselves, and eventually they will walk exactly where he wants them to go.

Usually.

The Architect follows the events of Through the Fire from the side of the man who believed he understood why everything happened.

And exposes the dangerous difference between designing a plan and controlling the people inside it.

That’s especially appropriate because we learn his architecture extends far beyond Lemuria. Even Flo is revealed as one of his long-running social experiments; he has been shaping Deacon’s community for decades.

HANS / THE JESTER — THE FOOL

Everyone thinks the fool is joking. That is what makes him dangerous.

JESTER · SERVANT · OBSERVER

Hans is almost always nearby.

Opening doors. Serving drinks. Standing in corners. Watching.

And occasionally saying something nobody understands until much later.

Known simply as Hans in Belial’s ordinary life and increasingly as the Jester within the Lemurian Order, he occupies a strange position inside the Architect’s world. He appears subordinate to Belial, yet speaks about kings, fools, lovers and destruction with an unsettling detachment from everyone else’s schemes.

Jade finds his riddles irritating.

Ignoring them doesn’t make them less accurate.

In a world populated by people desperate to control the future, the quiet man dressed as a fool may understand more about where everyone is headed than any of them realize.

This is why I think Hans is important.

He isn’t a conventional supporting character. He’s almost the novel’s chorus/fool/oracle.

His lines repeatedly sit outside the immediate psychology of the POV character. He warns Jade not to get between “the archer and his mark”; watches her transformation after taking the mark and describes bitterness reaching the roots; comments cryptically on Roselyn becoming the fool and Leo/Maricel as the separated lovers; and at the gala tells Jade that what has been lost cannot be undone.

And there’s another fascinating thing: Belial doesn’t dismiss him. At the gala, Belial actually smirks at Hans’s cryptic observation.

So I would preserve his ambiguity on the website. Don’t explain what Hans is. Make a new reader think, Wait—why does the servant get his own character card?

That’s perfect.

AZAZEL — THE KING

He was given a kingdom. Nobody asked whether he could be controlled once he had it.

FALLEN ANGEL · KING · RIVAL

Belial understands Azazel better than almost anyone alive.

His vanity. His appetites. His impulsiveness. His loneliness.

And his extraordinary capacity to destroy whatever carefully constructed role has been prepared for him.

Azazel is supposed to become the visible king of a world other people have designed behind the scenes.

Instead, he repeatedly behaves like exactly what he has always been:

Azazel.

Ancient history binds him to Belial. Maricel complicates that history. And beneath their alliances lies the uncomfortable question of which brother has actually been manipulating the other.

This is much stronger through Architect than “old rival,” because Belial is simultaneously contemptuous of Azazel and deeply invested in positioning him. He thinks Azazel has control at the gala while privately regarding that control as an illusion.

MARICEL — THE VARIABLE

She was supposed to follow the script.

ACTRESS · BELIEVER · WILDCARD

Maricel is not the protagonist of The Architect.

For perhaps the first time, readers are asked to watch her from the outside.

Jade initially sees an inexperienced young woman spectacularly unsuited to rule anything.

Belial sees something more useful.

Then something more interesting.

Then something he cannot quite categorize.

Maricel possesses an inconvenient tendency to believe people completely—and an equally inconvenient tendency to stop believing them once she sees behind the illusion.

She was meant to occupy a predetermined place in someone else’s kingdom.

Instead, her choices begin changing the people who were supposed to control hers.

That is much closer to what the manuscript actually does with her. Belial becomes fascinated precisely because her attachment doesn’t resemble Jade’s or Venus’s transactional desires; he recognizes something in her devotion that he cannot manufacture.

I also wouldn’t call her “The Obsession” on the website. That’s too revealing. The Variable tells the reader exactly what her structural function is without spoiling where Belial’s feelings go.

LEO — THE WEAPON

A weapon is useful until it chooses its own target.

ASSASSIN · SURVIVOR · DISRUPTION

Leo was raised to obey.

Other people have spent years deciding whom he should fear, whom he should kill and what he should believe.

That should make him easy for Belial to understand.

It doesn’t.

Violent, guarded and far more perceptive than his silence suggests, Leo becomes increasingly dangerous whenever his loyalties stop aligning with the people attempting to use him.

Belial knows how to manipulate an assassin.

The problem is that Leo keeps becoming a man.

JALEN LOVELL — THE STATESMAN

He doesn’t need a throne if the entire world is listening.

POLITICIAN · STRATEGIST · POWER BROKER

Jalen understands human power better than nearly anyone around him.

Unlike the ancient beings surrounding him, he doesn’t require supernatural abilities to command a room. He understands institutions, appearances, public fear and the value of giving people exactly what they need at precisely the right moment.

Belial provides the architecture.

Jalen learns how to sell it.

And unlike many of Belial’s human collaborators, Jalen has ambitions entirely his own.

I’d elevate Jalen significantly from our first draft. He isn’t merely “the politician.” He’s part of the original strategic trio with Jade and Belial during the Lemuria planning, and later becomes essential to converting their supernatural agenda into legitimate political authority.

TESS — THE VESSEL

She spent her life wanting to be chosen. Something finally chose her.

FIRST LADY · PRIESTESS · RIVAL

Beautiful, ambitious and intensely conscious of status, Tess has always understood life as competition.

She wants the role.

The man.

The attention.

The better life.

What she doesn’t understand is how long other forces have been preparing her to receive them.

From Jade’s perspective, Tess initially seems far better suited to their plans than Maricel: polished, ambitious and capable of following the script.

But becoming exactly what someone wanted you to become carries a price.

That captures the Naamah component much better. The manuscript explicitly establishes Tess as a vessel Naamah has cultivated for years.

ROSLYN — THE WHISPERER

She doesn’t need to move the pieces if she can tell them where to move themselves.

MANIPULATOR · CONFIDANTE · INSTIGATOR

Roselyn rarely needs physical power.

People tell her things.

She notices weaknesses.

And when she finds the right insecurity, she knows exactly where to press.

That makes her useful inside a movement built on manipulation.

It also makes her dangerous to the person who believes manipulation belongs to him.

Roselyn understands Jade’s jealousy, Tess’s attachments and Belial’s increasingly contradictory behavior perhaps better than any of them would like.

The mistake is assuming understanding the Architect means you’re safe from him.

And I love that Hans essentially comments on her manipulation immediately after her confrontation with Belial.

VENUS — THE DEVOTEE

Some people spend centuries waiting to be chosen.

IMMORTAL · DEVOTEE · SURVIVOR

Venus knows exactly what it means to orbit powerful men.

She has loved, waited, competed and survived long enough to understand that immortality does not make rejection hurt less.

Where Jade wants purpose and Maricel offers faith, Venus wants something painfully ordinary:

to finally be wanted by the person she wants.

In Belial’s world, even that can be exploited.