The Mystery of the Phantom CastleA Young Adult Science-Fantasy Novel (Ages 14+)When the great city of Kandar is torn open by a catastrophic dimensional storm, the world does not burn—it goes silent.
From the scarred Silent Plains rises an impossible structure: the Phantom Castle. Forged from light-drinking obsidian, the castle is not merely a fortress, but a living wound in reality itself—a temporal scar formed from centuries of buried truth, systemic greed, and inherited lies.
Ruling this anomaly is the Court Jester: a smiling nightmare and the embodiment of Kandar’s deepest corruption. He is not a villain born of chaos, but of justification—the “Neo-colonial Lie” made flesh, fed by stories ancestors once told themselves to excuse exploitation and power.
To break the cycle, the Jester demands three “true titans” enter the castle.
Elder Sanyu sends the only ones capable of surviving its trials:
- Zaya, a brilliant strategist who fears her intelligence is nothing more than charm and performance, masking an emptiness she cannot afford to reveal.
- Kairo, a colossal elemental mage whose overwhelming power feels meaningless unless it is validated by others.
- Ayana, a pioneering healer whose fusion of magic and biotechnology challenges tradition—and earns her quiet rejection.
Separated within the castle, each hero is forced into psychic trials that expose their deepest failures, self-doubt, and inherited trauma. The castle’s defenses are not monsters, but systems—bureaucratic, spiritual, and dimensional—designed to exclude anyone who does not fit a single, sanctioned idea of power.
To save Kandar from total collapse, the heroes must do what their society has always resisted: dismantle the lie at its core. Victory will not come through brute force, but through truth, integration, and a precise act of spiritual and dimensional healing.
Because some systems don’t fall when they are attacked.
They fall when they are finally understood.
Why this book is for teens (14+)The Mystery of the Phantom Castle is written for mid-to-older teens ready to engage with complex ideas through story. It explores:
- Systemic conflict — confronting societal rot, institutional greed, and neo-colonial power structures
- Psychological depth — characters wrestling with self-worth, failure, and internalized bias
- Abstract sci-fi concepts — dimensional energy, temporal scars, and psionic recalibration as metaphors for real-world systems
Though fantastical in setting, the struggles mirror those many teens face today: being asked to adapt, translate themselves, or prove their worth within systems that were never built for them.
Author’s Note (Director’s Cut Insight)This story was shaped by a lifetime of living between languages, cultures, and educational systems. As an educator who has taught in Curaçao, Colombia, the Netherlands, and the United States, I see these struggles daily in the classroom—students navigating brilliance that institutions often misread as deficiency.
All the heroes in this book are brown and Black. Their languages matter. Their ways of thinking matter. Even when systems insist otherwise.
The Phantom Castle stands for everything that gets suppressed but never disappears—creativity, memory, language, and truth waiting to be reclaimed.
This is not just a story about another world.
It is an invitation to imagine a future where you do not have to erase yourself to belong.
