Published Jul 9, 2026, 12:03 PM EDT
**Charlie Ridgely **is a writer from Maryland, currently residing in Nashville, Tennessee. He may be new to Collider, but he’s been writing, editing, conducting interviews, and podcasting around the industry for 10 years. From 2016 to the start of 2026, Charlie was a full time writer and critic at ComicBook.com. A lifelong movie fan, avid reader, and renowned (fictional) dungeon explorer/dragonslayer, Charlie is a jack-of-all-trades throughout the fandom multiverse and has covered everything under the sun.
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The journey of the Empyrean Series has been a fascinating one to this point. Rebecca Yarros’ dragon-riding romantasy saga has broken records and become a mainstay of the genre since Fourth Wing was published in 2023. The series is one of the most well-known and popular with readers around the country, though it is at a bit of a crossroads at the moment. A couple of seemingly rushed sequels landed with incredible sales numbers but very mixed reception, causing Yarros to take a bit of a breather and regroup, resulting in a much-needed break between books three and four.
After the rapid release and tepid response to Iron Flame and Onyx Storm, most fans of the *Fourth Wing *series still find themselves invested and anxious to see what Yarros has in store for the fourth installment. The question has now become just when we might see the next Empyrean adventure hit the bookstore shelves.
The answer to this question is a little complicated, depending on whether you’re looking specifically for the fourth main entry in the Empyrean Series, or if you’re simply looking to return to the world of Violet, Xaden, and the others from Basgiath War College. If you are hoping to see the sequel to Onyx Storm, and know the next chapter in the grand Empyrean story that Yarros has been crafting, the wait will be a little longer than you’re used to.
So far, the wait between Fourth Wing books has never been longer than 13 months. All three existing entries were released in less than a two-year time span. Onyx Storm arrived back in January 2025 and the wait continues for book four. As of now, there is no release date for this fourth official entry in the series, though it is estimated that it will arrive at some point in 2027. In other words, you’ve got a little longer to wait (which is probably a good thing).
However, if you want a taste of what’s going on in Empyrean, Yarros does have a new release arriving much sooner, it’s just not part of the main book series. For that, you only have to wait a couple more months.
Yarros announced earlier this year that there would be a mystery book from the world of Empyrean coming out in 2026, though she has kept mum on any details surrounding the book itself. It was quickly confirmed that this book wouldn’t be the official fourth entry in the Empyrean Series, but it would take place within the same universe. Still, months later, the contents of the book have remained a mystery.
We do have some solid details about the release, though, and it is coming up rather quickly. The book is set to be a novella, coming in at around 170 pages, so it won’t be a big undertaking or a long read like the previous Fourth Wing entries. Yarros has also confirmed that the novella is arriving on September 29th of this year, meaning that it’s only a couple of months away.
This seems to follow the same structure as fellow romantasy mainstay A Court of Thorns and Roses, which followed its massive three-book start with a smaller novel that focused on lower stakes. That fourth ACOTAR entry still followed the main characters and is considered part of the main series, but it’s difficult not to see the parallels between the two.
We also know that this September release is not going to be the* Fourth Wing* graphic novel, which is still in the works, There is also a TV adaptation of Fourth Wing coming to Amazon’s Prime Video, with Meredith Averill serving as showrunner and Westworld’s Lisa Joy directing the pilot. Jonathan Nolan, Joy’s husband and creative partner, will be serving as an executive producer, as will current Best Actor Oscar winner Michael B. Jordan.
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Meredith Averill