Luca Asten

Luca Asten, a South African native living along the Western Cape’s Garden Route, is the author of several works published on Amazon.

Her newest novel is the first installment of a three-part series titled The Russian and His Personnel. The opening volume, Bloodlines, is a literary fantasy novel blending raw magic, murder and an impossible love into an epic tale woven from Russian folklore, fables, and fairy tales. An excerpt from Bloodlines can be read below.

Luca is also the author of the novel The Book of the Fairest and three novellas: The Girl Who Invented the Shower Buddy, She Called Me Click, and The Detour. Her works carry a rich South African undertone while frequently travelling beyond borders, blending cultural fascination and psychological drama—each capturing moments of irresistible intrigue and daring imagination across worlds built not only on secrets, but on the fragile boundary between fantasy and reality.

Bloodlines Prologue: The Legend of Olga Yadkrova.

Before the events of the novel, a legend was whispered throughout the ancient Slavic woods. This is the story of the curse that shaped generations and gave rise to the Yadkrova bloodline.

In the beginning, there was an ugly old crone who lived a happy life in the ancient Slavic woods. She lived by only one rule—her own—and never by the command of men. Deep within that untamed forest, where no man dared enter, she could manipulate falling raindrops, steer the wind, poison a villager’s crops with a single grain of salt, snatch a wandering child, or make a grown man weep until he drowned in his own tears.

But when the townsfolk could no longer endure her wickedness—when enough children had vanished, and enough misfortune had befallen their homes and fields—they gathered. At dusk, a hundred villagers crossed into the heart of the woodlands, where day was as dark as night, each carrying fire and chains.

The battle raged until morning, when the old crone was finally pinned down, and her malevolent blood stained the forest floor. But before her body was hacked to pieces and forever sealed within the soil, her final words split the dawn—words that cast a curse not only upon the land, but upon her offspring—the Yadkrova descendants.

She swore that the Yadkrova lineage would one day bring about her resurrection, vowing that when the ground was saturated with the cursed blood of a hundred descendants, she would awaken once more.

But just as darkness is defined by light, evil cannot exist alone, and through the ages that legacy twisted, reshaped, and transformed, until a split occurred, giving rise to a second strain; a righteous bloodline created to eradicate its corrupted counterpart. These hunters relentlessly pursued those with tainted blood across the Slavic reaches, never allowing them to return to the woods from which the curse was born.

Yet the twenty-first century had given rise to a man the likes of which the world had never witnessed. For the powers that be knew what must be summoned to confront the darkness stirring deep beneath the Slavic earth.

In the beginning, they called her Olga Yadkrova—until she was awakened from her ancient slumber…

Connect with Luca here.