Where Trust Began
by Blake AncellPublish: Jul 23, 2026Series: The Eridan CycleScience FictionBook Overview
Fifteen years before the Asteria crashes on Eridan, Captain Elias Rhyne and Dr. Mara Vey are strangers.Their first mission together begins with a dead animal that should never have been where Mara finds it.
A thessik lies on a windswept ridge outside Tallis Reach, facing uphill instead of toward the shelter its species seeks before severe weather. The storm arriving over the mountains is already hours ahead of forecast. Nearly two hundred colonists are preparing to evacuate.
Rhyne needs them off the surface.
Mara needs to understand what the wildlife is doing before he sends them into its path.
The first signs are easy to dismiss. A few animals outside their normal range. Unusual feeding. Movement in the wrong direction. Then species that should respond to the storm in completely different ways begin abandoning their usual behavior.
Something is changing across the basin.
Mara can see pieces of the pattern, but she refuses to turn incomplete evidence into a convenient answer. Rhyne respects evidence. He also has a closing evacuation window and people whose lives depend on decisions being made now.
Then the road starts to fail.
The farther the evacuation moves from Tallis Reach, the less reliable the old maps become. Flooded ground hides weaknesses beneath an intact surface. Wildlife crosses routes that were clear only minutes earlier. Safe ground becomes dangerous without warning, and the storm keeps taking away options.
Rhyne begins giving Mara decisions no scientist at Tallis Reach was ever supposed to make.
The two of them started this mission as strangers. Now Rhyne has to decide whether Mara’s judgment is worth putting lives behind, while Mara has to make decisions with consequences far beyond anything she expected when she walked onto that ridge.
There is no perfect route left. There is only the evidence in front of them and the choices they make with it.
Before fifteen years of missions together, before the Asteria, before Eridan, there was Tallis Reach.
This is where trust began.
Where Trust Began is a fast-paced science-fiction adventure and the prequel to Stranded on Eridan.
