The Rebel (The Legion of Pneumos, Book 2.3) (E-book)
The Rebel (The Legion of Pneumos, Book 2.3) (E-book)
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They Built a Dam to Drown His World
Neval Brennan has nothing. No family worth claiming. No future beyond the fields. No voice that matters to anyone who holds power.
But when the Marian Empire builds a dam that will flood his village—drown generations of upland history for the sake of Marian grain and imperial profit—Neval discovers something he didn't know he had: rage. And a gift for seeing angles, trajectories, the precise point where pressure breaks stone.
They took everything. Now he'll take their dam apart brick by brick. Even if it costs him the people he loves most.
Before He Became a Legend. Before Red Willow. This Is How a Rebel Is Born.
Neval never wanted to be a hero. He just wanted to keep his head down and maybe, just maybe, earn enough respect that people would stop treating him like his drunk father's mistake.
Then the Bellatorio came with their engineers and stone masons, their maps that showed upland villages as empty space, their plans to flood an entire valley for the empire's convenience. The dam would bring water to Marian farmlands. It would also erase Ceffí—Neval's home, his history, the graves of everyone who came before.
The village elders petition. The empire ignores them. Peaceful protest fails. And Neval, brilliant with angles and physics in ways he's never had words for, realizes something: If you can build a dam, you can also destroy one.
Armed with stolen plans, forbidden explosives, and a plan that just might kill them all, Neval leads a desperate mission to sabotage the dam before it's completed. But rebellion has costs he never imagined. His best friend Rowan. The girl they both love. A father who might actually care. And the future Neval thought he was fighting for.
Because when the dam falls, so does everything else.
Some Prices Are Too High. Neval Will Pay Them Anyway.
The Story
Neval Brennan is seventeen, barely literate, and invisible. His father drinks. His village despises him. The best he can hope for is a life in the fields, head down, earning just enough respect to be left alone.
Then the Marian Empire announces the dam.
Engineers arrive with maps that show Ceffí as empty space. Stone masons measure where the water will rise. Imperial officials explain with perfect bureaucratic efficiency that uplander families can relocate to designated settlements. Work Marian farms. Integrate into the empire's prosperity.
The village elders try negotiation. Petitions. Appeals to mercy. All ignored.
But Neval sees something the elders don't. He's spent his whole life calculating angles—the precise strike to topple a stack of pots, the exact trajectory to fell a tree where you want it. Physics he's never had the education to name, but understands in his bones.
And when he looks at the dam's stolen engineering plans, he sees exactly where to strike.
With his best friend Rowan, a network of desperate rebels, and some explosive magic, Neval plans the impossible.
But rebellion is never just about the mission. There's Tegan—brilliant, trapped, writing rebel pamphlets under a false name. She's engaged to Rowan. She loves Neval. And when secrets surface and loyalties fracture, the tunnel beneath the dam becomes the least dangerous thing Neval is navigating.
The empire doesn't forgive insurrection. Victory doesn't guarantee survival. And Neval is about to learn that some choices, once made, reshape you into someone you barely recognize.
This is how a rebel is born. This is the trauma that shapes him. This is the beginning of everything that comes after.
Perfect For Readers Who Love:
What Readers Are Saying
H.B. Reneau writes fantasy about people the empire forgets—until they fight back. The Rebel draws on her experience in emergency medicine, where she's witnessed firsthand how systems designed to help often crush the people they claim to serve.
Neval's story explores class conflict, environmental destruction as violence, and the trauma that shapes rebels. This isn't romanticized revolution—it's the brutal reality of what resistance costs when you have nothing left to lose.
The Rebel is essential preparation for Book 3, where Neval's viewpoint reveals the rebel network operating in the empire's shadows—and the choices that will force him to confront everything he thought he was fighting for.
Where This Fits in the Series
The Rebel is ESSENTIAL reading before Book 3. Neval becomes a POV character in the main series, and without his origin story, his motivations, trauma, and relationship to the Legion won't make sense.
Character Origins (read after Book 2, before Book 3)
Read Chapter One Free
Meet Neval in the fields—despised, brilliant, angry. The day the Bellatorio arrives to survey his world for drowning.
Read Free Sample Chapter →They Took His World. He'll Burn Theirs Down.
A dam. A tunnel. A forbidden explosive. And a boy who sees angles no one else can.
The rebellion begins here. Are you ready for Book 3?
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