While We Burn #1 Review: Dark Fantasy With Teeth, Ashes, And A Whole Lotta Soul

WEPA! Alright, Crusaders, gather around the fire, but not too close, because While We Burn #1 is not playing nice with the matches. This ain’t your shiny castle fantasy where some pretty-boy knight swings a blessed sword, kisses a royal hand, and saves the kingdom before supper. Nah, fam. This is mud under the fingernails fantasy. Blood in the snow fantasy. “You survived, but at what cost?” fantasy. The kind of book that looks you dead in the face and says, “Oh, you thought monsters were the worst thing out here? That’s cute.”

Created and written by Denis Berashevich, While We Burn arrives with the confidence of a world already ruined before you even turn the first page. Fire magic gave birth to monsters, the kingdom fell, the land got chewed up by darkness, and 100 years later, an old chronicler is trying to save what’s left by telling stories. That concept alone has that campfire legend flavor, like something your abuelo would whisper after the power goes out, except here the shadows got claws and the walls don’t feel safe. It is dark medieval fantasy with a cracked spine, a scorched heart, and enough dread to make your cafecito turn cold.

The preview story, “Tavish. The Survivor,” is a nasty little gem in the best way. Tavish introduces himself with the kind of tired honesty you only get from a man who has seen too much and stopped pretending the world owes him anything. He is not some grand hero walking through destiny with a theme song blasting behind him. He is a survivor. Period. Three words. Heavy ones. His parents were killed when he was young, knights took him in, the boy became a warrior, and then life did what life does in worlds like this: it snatched the fantasy right out of the fantasy. The Order falls. The armor loses its shine. The dream gets dragged through the dirt. Tavish keeps walking.

That is where the writing hits hardest. Denis Berashevich understands that survival is not automatically noble. Sometimes survival is ugly. Sometimes it means running when others die. Sometimes it means betraying people because staying would mean being buried next to them. Sometimes it means becoming someone you would cross the road to avoid. Tavish knows this about himself, and the script does not let him hide from it. That gives the story its bite. This is not “look how cool my tragic warrior is.” This is “look at the wreckage a person carries when the world keeps demanding one more pound of flesh.” Big difference. Major difference. Dead-ass.

The anthology structure is also a smart move. While We Burn is designed as a series of short stories, each one drawn by a different artist and each one adding another scar to the same world. That format can be tricky, because short comics need to move fast without feeling thin. But “Tavish. The Survivor” shows the blueprint can work. It gives you a full emotional arc, a chunk of world-building, creature horror, guilt, loss, action, and a final emotional gut-punch without overstaying its welcome. It reads like a journal entry found in a dead man’s coat. That’s flavorful. That’s grim. That’s the good soup.

Michael Kupitsky’s art and inks bring that old-world brutality with confidence. The pages feel heavy, like the air itself has been stained by smoke. Tavish’s face carries miles on it. You can see exhaustion carved into him, not just drawn on top of him. The creatures have that feral, wrong-looking energy that makes the world feel unsafe beyond the panel borders. The action is sharp and nasty when it needs to be, but the quieter panels do the real damage. A man standing alone. A child reading. A sword held like a decision. That stuff lands because the art knows when to roar and when to whisper.

Simon Gough’s colors are doing serious work here too. The palette leans into burnt oranges, bruised reds, corpse-cold blues, dirty browns, and that sickly winter light that makes everything feel one bad breath away from death. The fire never feels comforting for long. It feels like memory. It feels like warning. It feels like the world’s last bad habit. When the story shifts into snow, blood, and flame, the colors pop without making the page feel glossy or artificial. It stays gritty. It stays grounded. It stays mean.

Jackie Marzan’s letters and design deserve a nod because this story leans hard on narration, journal tone, and broken-world atmosphere. The lettering gives the pages that scraped parchment, last-testament feeling. You feel like Tavish is confessing because he has no time left to lie. In a couple of spots, the stylized texture makes the reader lean in a little more than usual, especially where the world’s grime and the lettering’s personality get cozy together. But honestly, that also fits the artifact vibe of the piece. Still, as the series expands, giving the most emotionally loaded captions just a touch more breathing room would make the impact hit even cleaner. Let the pain stretch its legs, ya know?

What really separates While We Burn from a lot of dark fantasy indie projects is that it does not confuse “grim” with “empty.” Big trap. A lot of books throw in monsters, gore, sad people, broken kingdoms, and suddenly think they invented depth. Nah, my guy, that’s just vibes with a sword. While We Burn has actual emotional architecture. Tavish is not just surviving because the plot needs him alive. He is surviving because he does not know how to stop, and then the story asks what happens when survival finally finds a purpose. That is the spark. That is the heartbeat under all the mud and monster blood.

And when that purpose arrives, the whole story shifts. Suddenly Tavish’s life is not just about making it to the next sunrise. He has someone to protect. Someone to teach. Someone who makes his own existence feel like more than a long escape route. That is where the book sneaks up on you. You go in expecting swords, monsters, and medieval misery, and yes, you get all that. Then boom, here comes the emotional uppercut. The final journal material gives the story this bruised tenderness that feels earned, not slapped on for drama. It says surviving is a choice, not a state, and that line could carry the whole campaign on its back like a warrior dragging a broken banner through ash.

As a campaign pitch, While We Burn is strong because it knows exactly what it is selling: a world, not just a single story. The first sample gives you enough to understand the tone, but not enough to solve the mystery. That matters. The fallen kingdom, the origin of the monsters, the old chronicler, the different lives scattered through this ruined land, all of it feels like a bigger mosaic waiting to come together. You can feel the edges of the map expanding. You can smell the smoke beyond the hill. That is how you pull readers into a fantasy universe without dumping a whole encyclopedia on their head. Thank you. My neck appreciates it.

The best thing I can say about While We Burn is this: it feels hungry. Not rushed. Not sloppy. Hungry. Like a creator and team pushing to build something with myth, muscle, and memory. It has the indie fire, the kind that says, “We may not have a giant corporate machine behind us, but we got vision, grit, and a sword stuck in the dirt.” That energy matters. That is why crowdfunding books like this deserve attention. They remind people that comics are not just capes, reboots, and whatever multiverse headache is trending this week. Comics can still sit by the fire, look you in the eye, and tell you a story that leaves ash on your hands.

While We Burn is already funded, which means the people have spoken, and the people said, “Yeah, give us the monsters.” But funded does not mean finished in the hearts of readers. This is exactly the kind of project that benefits from more eyes, more backers, more word of mouth, and more dark fantasy fans pulling up to the table. Because when a book has this much atmosphere, this much emotional bite, and this much world-building potential, you do not let it quietly pass by like some poor villager wandering into the woods at night. Nah. You grab the torch. You make noise.

While We Burn #1 is a brutal, moody, emotionally grounded dark fantasy anthology with a killer first impression and a world begging to be explored. Tavish is the kind of character who feels like he has lived five lives and regretted four of them, and that makes him compelling from jump. The visuals are savage and textured, the colors burn cold and hot in all the right places, and the story has enough sorrow and steel to make fantasy fans sit up and say, “Hold up, what is this?” This one has teeth, fam. Big ugly monster teeth. And I mean that as love.

CRUSADERS SCORE:
4/5

Support the Kickstarter, Late Pledges Are Still Open!
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/whileweburn/while-we-burn

Creator / Writer: Denis Berashevich
Kickstarter Manager: Frank Martin
Editor: Alex Reed
Story Preview Reviewed: “Tavish. The Survivor”
Writer: Denis Berashevich
Art / Inks: Michael Kupitsky
Colors: Simon Gough
Letters / Design: Jackie Marzan
Additional Official While We Burn Team: Danny Kim, Donny Hadiwidjaja, Utcab Chatterjee, Jason Wordie, Daniel Semenov
Publisher/Platform: Independent, Kickstarter
Campaign Status: Funded, check current pledge and late-backer availability

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