It has been 22 years since the descendants of humanity, the Lightborne, were forced into a humiliating peace with the industrialized Elven Enclave. Little by little, their old world is crumbling as desperate nationalists and reformers vie against each other to prepare the Lightborne for a coming, existential war with the Elves. At the borders of this coming apocalypse, a repentant war criminal, once hailed a hero by the Lightborne and rightly reviled by the Elves, sits in a shameful military post, ignorant that justice is coming for him. Canto for the Fallen is a Dark Fantasy work centered on a man fleeing the crimes he once believed was justice and his destiny to be used as a disposable tool by the state once again. It was influenced by works such as A Song of Ice and Fire, the Black Company, Stormlight Archives, Berserk, Fromsoftware's 'Soulsborne' series, and Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn's "The Gulag Archipelago."