Bow to Babylon’s god or burn. When Nebuchadnezzar demands worship of his golden idol, Daniel’s friends refuse, and Babylon’s demonic priests mark them for death. In the unseen realm, ancient Watchers fight for control of Judah, Egypt, and Babylon. In besieged Jerusalem, Ariela faces starvation, hungry mobs, and a wicked king. Can Daniel get there in time to save Ariela before the city falls?

To see more character pictures for this novel that are not included here, get the book, The Daniel Trilogy Character Picture Book, available on Amazon 2027.

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Babylon

Daniel (Belteshazzar)

A brilliant exile who reads the dreams of emperors yet cannot protect the one girl he loves. Eleven years and seven hundred miles separate him from Ariela, and now his king is marching to burn her city. What good is the ear of the most powerful man alive if it cannot buy a single life?

Ariela

A fierce Judean servant girl who can see into the unseen realm, and who has waited eleven years for a man she may never see again. Trapped in a doomed Jerusalem, she hides a hunted prophet and catches the eye of a king she cannot refuse. When the walls break, will she choose her honor or her life?

Mishael (Meshach)

A powerfully built captain of the temple guard and the most relentlessly hopeful man Daniel has ever known. He loves a female Babylonian scribe who will not believe, and walks into a furnace on a promise God has not guaranteed. When the fourth man appears in the fire, will he learn that saved is not the same as spared?

Azariah (Abednego)

The sharp-tongued chief scribe of Babylon, a pessimist who has spent his life translating his strange brother to the world. He carries burdens no one asked him to carry and prays over a sleeping man for an impossible answer. When that prayer is answered inside a roaring furnace, will anyone understand what he saw?

Hananiah (Shadrach)

A savant of unsettling genius who holds a thousand years of star records in his head but cannot meet a man’s eye. For eight years he builds a bronze machine to find one foretold day, and it fails because sun and moon will not agree. If the number he needs is in no archive on earth, who will give it to him?

Ezekiel and Miriam

A young exiled priest struck speechless by God, and the patient wife who is his only comfort. He acts out Jerusalem’s doom in the street while his neighbors laugh, and then God tells him exactly what He intends to take. When the delight of his eyes is taken, will he be permitted to weep for her?

King Nebuchadnezzar

The most powerful man on earth: brilliant, generous, monstrous, and utterly unpredictable, whose quiet voice is far worse than his shouting. He raises Daniel high, demands worship of a golden image, and hungers for the one thing no empire can buy: eternal life. What happens when a captive people’s God decides to take his mind?

Queen Amytis

A dark-skinned, heavenly-armored messenger. Compassionate, intense, and always present at the edge of Daniel’s dreams. He doesn’t just deliver information; he delivers destiny. Is Gabriel merely watching Daniel… or preparing him for something that will shake kingdoms?

Arioch / Nebuzaradan

Captain of the guard turned Chief Butcher of Babylon, lean and fiercely loyal, doing the work no one else will. He is a young female scribe’s surrogate uncle, and the commander who will raze Jerusalem. Can a man serve a king becoming a monster and remain a man of integrity and justice?

Ashpenaz

The chief eunuch of Babylon, once the officer who executed Judean nobles and now the only true ally four young exiles have. He guards a secret that could destroy him and stands between the Judeans and the men who want them dead. When a shadow moves through the palace at night, who will protect them then?

Belashina / Bela

A dazzling Mistress of the Daughters of Nabu who believes nothing she has not proven—including the God of the man who loves her. She is a murdered official’s secret daughter and the confidante of a queen with no protection under law. When ten thousand bow to a golden image, what will she do?

Marduk-zakiru / Zakiru

The albino high priest of Marduk: silken, patient, monstrous, carrying a legion of voices inside his skull. He builds a network of immortal shadow reivers among Babylon’s priests while preparing a ritual atop the great ziggurat. When the door he has spent his life opening swings wide, who is standing behind it?

Toxaris

A shrewd, sardonic Scythian warlord commanding a thousand horsemen, loyal to gold and to nothing else. He rides to Jerusalem because the price was right, and runs down a fleeing king across the plains of Jericho. When mercenaries take a city, what happens to the innocent who are worth nothing in gold?

Nebuchadnezzar’s Statues

Four in the Fiery Furnace

Hananiah’s Star Device

Jerusalem

King Jehoiakim

An arrogant, violent fool who cut up a prophecy of God and fed it to his own fire. He gambled Judah on Egyptian promises and left his son the wreckage. What becomes of a king who believes a word from God dies when the page burns?

King Zedekiah

A frightened puppet king who knows what is right and has never once managed to do it. He seeks Jeremiah in secret, refuses his counsel, and covets a girl he has no right to touch. When Pharaoh turns back, will David’s last king surrender—or lose his sons?

Nehushta and Hamutal

Two formidable queen mothers of Judah: one proud and calculating, the other a dignified elder who has watched thrones rise for sixty years. Between them they hold more real power than the men who claim to rule. When one dies and the other is dragged into exile, who protects Ariela and the women of the palace?

Tabia

A young Egyptian servant artist, the closest thing to a sister Ariela has. She sings to dying children while the city starves. In a city where the innocent die first, what becomes of a girl who only wanted to be kind?

Queen Keziah

The beautiful, shrewd, unexpectedly wise wife of Zedekiah, who manages her husband’s terrors like weather. She holds a household together through famine and plague and shelters two servant girls. When Ariela brings proof of the crime starving the city, what can a queen do?

Ebed-melech

An Ethiopian eunuch and royal chamberlain, a foreigner in God’s house and the only man brave enough to defy a king. He hauls Jeremiah from the mud with rags and rope and shelters a girl who cannot repay him. What does God promise a man who believes he can never belong?

Jeremiah

The weeping prophet: broken, beaten, and right for forty years without being believed. God commands him to preach surrender to a city that calls it treason, and it earns him the stocks and a cistern of mud. If the only honest man in Jerusalem is left to die in a pit, who will warn the city?

Pashhur

The temple’s chief officer: sleek, pious, corrupt, beating prophets and doctoring grain records while a city starves. Jeremiah renamed him Terror on Every Side, and he has spent his career proving it. When he throws Jerusalem’s last feast, what has he served his guests?

Jerusalem Burning

The Archangels

Michael

The archangel and prince of Israel, a scarred commander who has defended the covenant people since the patriarchs. He must watch the city he was given to guard handed to its enemies, and strikes a bargain no angel should make. When his brother angels ask him to retreat, what does a warrior do?

Gabriel

The stoic messenger who stands in the presence of God, patient beyond understanding and blunt beyond comfort. He shows Daniel empires that will not exist for five hundred years and never softens a word of it. If the future he reveals cannot be changed, why show it to a man at all?

Uriel

A small, blonde, fiercely protective angel with a dry wit and a talent for blades, guarding a girl who can actually see him. He forbids her to go to Babylon, then vanishes from her sight for years while her world burns. Has her guardian abandoned her—or has she simply stopped being able to see?

Four archangels of the Presence: a healer sent to a beaten prophet, a watcher of the covenant, a shepherd assigned to young Ezekiel, and a keeper of hope. They weep over Jerusalem, forbidden to stop a judgment their own God decreed. When a hostile god tears open the Ark of the Covenant, what is inside?

Elohim

Watchers of Babylon

Marduk

The chief god of Babylon: enormous, magnificent, contemptuous, four thousand years into building an empire in his image. He crushes a high priest’s ambitions and gathers a horde of ancient horrors for a purpose he shares with no one. When a captive people’s God speaks into his king’s mind, what then?

Nabu
The god of scribes and wisdom, Marduk’s own son and patron of the great House of the Tablet, prizing eloquence above nearly all. He watches over Babylon’s scholars—and takes unusual interest in four Judean youths who have entered his house. What use has a god of wisdom for boys whose God knows more than he does?

Ishtar
The Queen of Heaven, goddess of love and war, breathtaking and merciless, with two scimitars and no patience for rivals. She fights the gods of Egypt on the field and takes her tribute in worship and in blood. What does the goddess of desire want from a city learning to fear a God who cannot be seduced?

Ea
The ancient god of deep waters and magic, older and craftier than most of the pantheon. He holds the Euphrates against Egyptian sorcery, keeps a starving city caged, and lends his strength to whatever scheme suits him. When water rises in a place no water should reach, whose hand is on it?

Adad
The storm god of rain and thunder, whose weather can rot a besieged city’s stores or break an army’s supply line. He stays behind at Jerusalem with a skeleton force, holding the trap shut while famine does the work. If the gods themselves are managing the starvation, how long can a city possibly hold?

Nergal
The god of the underworld, war, and plague, whose footsteps scorch the ground and whose retinue arrives as a cloud of flies. He hunts the gods of Egypt across the Nile delta and carries pestilence wherever he is sent. When plague is a weapon rather than an accident, who decides where it falls?

Ereshkigal
The cold queen of the underworld and ruler of the dead, Ishtar’s sister and her opposite in every way. Her realm is the one place the ancients believed no one returns from—and it becomes the destination of a prisoner no god should hold. Can anything bring an archangel back from the house of dust?

Watchers of Canaan

Baal
The storm god and prince of Canaan: ancient, exhausted, consumed by a four-thousand-year hunger for one stone beneath Jerusalem. He has schemed since before the Flood to seize the key to the Abyss and free the two hundred ancients. When he finally stands in the holy of holies, what waits there?

Chemosh
The god of Moab, a proud and predatory Watcher who prowls the borderlands of Judah hunting anything that can see him. He notices a Judean girl watching him across a river crossing, and understands exactly what she is. What does a god do about a mortal who sees everything—and what is stopping him?

Molech
The devouring god of child sacrifice, gorged on the offerings of Judah’s own valley, grown fat on the atrocity that has doomed Jerusalem more surely than any army. He is the reason the covenant broke and the reason judgment is coming. When the city that fed him burns, what becomes of a god whose worshipers are dead?

Astarte
The Queen of Heaven, a younger, bronze-skinned goddess of fertility, sex, and war who takes her tribute in cakes and libations from Judah’s own women. She fights with a war club, trades barbed insults with rivals, and never once goes hungry. When the God of Israel abandons His house, does the goddess who has coveted it finally win?

Asherah
The matronly fertility mother goddess whom idolatrous Israel dared to call the consort of Yahweh, armored and shining with divine rage. She helps bind Molech hand and foot, and counts her dwindling allies aloud with growing unease. If the gods of Canaan are alone and outnumbered, what will they risk to take the temple anyway?

Anat
The adolescent war goddess in golden armor with golden hair and two golden swords, grinning through bloody teeth—the most vicious warrior among the gods of Canaan. Called “Virgin Anat,” though her past with her brother Baal says otherwise, she wades in blood to her knees. What does a girl who lives only for slaughter do when the killing finally stops?

Deber
The skeletal god of famine and pestilence, malnourished and crawling with maggots, yet able to swing a sickle sword with terrible precision. He is the one who stalks in the darkness with hunger, emptying storehouses and hollowing out a walled city from the inside. When a nation is besieged by hunger itself, how long can walls matter?

Resheph
The archer god of plague, war, and pestilence, his half-decomposed body trailing a cloud of flies, carrying a composite bow strung with arrows of disease. He tours a besieged Jerusalem like a gourmet chef inspecting a kitchen, appraising the famine with connoisseur’s delight. What happens when Yahweh takes up the very gods Judah worshiped and turns them on her?

Qeteb
The meaty god of pestilence and destruction, a swinging war hammer in his fist and rot spreading across his own flesh. He is the noonday waster, third of an interchangeable trinity of ruin, and he fouls a hoarder’s secret meat stores with his own filth. When Jerusalem’s noblemen sit down to the last feast in the city, what are they eating?

Watchers of Egypt

Amun-Ra
The blue-skinned king of the Egyptian gods, radiant and imperious, the authority behind Pharaoh’s throne. He leads his pantheon against the gods of Babylon in a battle no human eye will witness. When two empires meet at Pelusium, do soldiers decide it—or something else?

Horus
The falcon-headed son of Ra, patron of Pharaohs, one eye the sun and one the moon, able to become a giant raptor. He fights Nergal in the delta marshes while the mortal armies bleed below. If Egypt’s gods cannot hold their ground, what is Pharaoh’s word worth?

Heka
The god of magic itself, peerless in sorcery, smiling the way a serpent smiles, working his spells from the safety of the royal barge. Only Ea checks him, and on the Nile the advantage is his. When two masters of magic meet, does it matter which army is braver?

Montu
The bull-headed god of war, snorting with anticipation, the most purely violent of Egypt’s divine host. He stands at Amun-Ra’s side and lives for the moment the lines meet. When a god exists for nothing but war, what is left of him when his side loses?