In 2022, someone decided to transplant an action-horror scenario into the 15th-century Ottoman Empire. A group of flawed warriors sent to hunt something, only to discover they’re the ones being hunted. That someone was me. The project was called Brotherhood of the Wolf.
The genre was action-horror. The initial format was prose novels. There was no model for how the characters would function within that structure. As characters were introduced, the project evolved from action-horror to sword-and-sorcery. The format became sequential narrative art.
The series was called Brotherhood of the Wolf. The first arc was Blood Tax, named for the Ottoman devshirme practice known in the West as the Blood Tax. Writing began in 2022. The format was graphic novel serial.
Artists were recruited. Issue 1 of Blood Tax was completed. In 2024, professional writers were brought in: Selvir as creative director, Ezra as writer. Selvir worked from Austria, Ezra from Minnesota, me from Seattle. Scripts were revised and the series underwent a soft reboot. In October 2025, issues 1 and 2 were released as a bundle. On October 7, 2025, the prose novella False Light was released as an interlude between issues 1 and 2.
The devshirme took children from Christian families. What the hunters found in the forests of Serbia took something else.
Blood Tax issues 1–2 and the novella False Light are available at https://talesofkhayr.com/blood-tax/