The War Within

Reflections on Duality

As we all launch headlong into 2026, I thought it appropriate to reflect on the dichotomy of human duality, particularly this of all months, January. The Romans named this month Ianuarius (Januarius) after Janus, the Roman god of the threshold, who is most famously depicted with two faces. One looks back at the ancestors and the history that forged him, while the other stares steely-eyed into the uncertain future. The Romans understood a truth I grapple with daily: the truth that none of us is ever just one thing. I certainly am not. We are all the sum of our contradictions; the warrior-poets standing in the doorway between who we were and who we are becoming. We are all capable of both great tenderness and terrible destruction, depending on which way we choose to face.

I feel this tension every day. I am a man defined by the war between who I am and who I strive to be.

I believe that every human heart holds the capacity for immense kindness and love, yet we all harbor a dark potential for deceit and cruelty. I believe in rugged self-reliance, but I also know that the only path to an authentic life is complete surrender to something bigger than myself. I honor the “antique” ways, origins, and the blood of my ancestors, but I am fiercely loyal to the progress of the future my children will inherit.

Growing up, I was an athlete. I focused on the physical, the tangible, and the fight. I played many sports and later as a young adult, studied the martial arts for over a decade. The idea of duality became clear to me through those studies. The particular martial art I studied, and later taught, was a “complete” system; meaning, we not only learned hard linear movements (think front kick) but also soft, circular movements (think Aikido). We learned specifically how to dislocate bones and strike pressure points, but we also learned to heal. The idea of the warrior-poet fascinated me, and it was in this laboratory of pain and healing that my novel series was born. I wanted to write about characters that were deep, that had genuine problems, talents, victories and defeats. In those early years, I did not know what to do with the stories that blossomed in my mind. I was no writer, but now over twenty years later, these stories demand to be told.

This fascination with the “complete” system, the hard and the soft, is the DNA of Touch of the Eternal, the first installment of the Graethean Chronicles series. I don’t want heroes who were purely good, nor villains who were cartoonishly evil. I want characters who, like us, are at war with themselves.

Take Samien Jin. He is the embodiment of the tension between self-reliance and surrender. He is a man who wants nothing more than to carve his own path, relying only on his skills and the iron in his hand. Yet, he is bound by a heritage he hates and a destiny he never asked for. He’s a “mongrel” and a duality made flesh, caught between two worlds that both reject him. He has the capacity for immense violence, which he views as a curse, yet it is the very tool he must use to survive.

Then there is Fahrenweh, who represents the delicate balance between the warrior and the poet. She is a cleric, a healer, and a maiden of the Geldenaei, trained to preserve a life with tenderness. Yet, she rides a griffin, a beast of absolute predation, and wields a lance. She is the “soft” circular movement and the “hard” linear strike wrapped in one. She proves that to protect the things we love, we must sometimes be capable of destroying the things that threaten them.

And finally, there is Riegend. If Samien and Fahrenweh represent the struggle for balance, Riegend represents the danger of the scale tipping too far. He shows us what happens when we direct our “surrender” at the wrong master. He is the shadow in the mirror and the reminder that the same passion that fuels a hero can consume a villain.

These characters are my attempt to answer the question that started in that dojang twenty years ago. Can we be both iron and velvet? And if we must choose, which face do we show the world?

My wish for you in this new year is that you find the courage to embrace both sides of your own nature. We do not need to choose between strength and softness. We simply need the wisdom to know when to deploy them. As you navigate the months ahead, may you find the resilience of the warrior when the seas are rough, and the heart of the poet when you finally reach the quiet of the mountains. Thank you for reading and for walking this path with me. I will be back next month with more from the world of the Graethean Chronicles.

Until then,

J. James Adler