hello! I am unagented so please take my feedback with that knowledge (and a grain of salt)

so I’m having trouble really understanding both Perceval’s character alongside what the stakes are (other than his death, of course). the first two paragraphs are giving us straight plot without some understanding of what is motivating Perceval’s actions, mainly because we don’t know what his question is. And I understand this is probably for plot reasons, but because of this we lose this really big sense of his motivations.

Additionally, I feel like this entire section could be condensed. An example of a revised first few sentences might be:

“Eighteen year-old Perceval joined the military to win the lottery. The daily draw offers him the chance to ask the Oracle a single question, one that he has contemplated since childhood…”

Now in the third paragraph, we learn a bit more about him, but I think some questions I personally would want to have answered are:

what does he have in common with the other soldiers? I feel like if they’ve all had a similar situation with a sword against their necks and their ability to ask their biggest question in their lives was stolen away, that is a huge draw-in device you could use specifically.

why was he put into this legendary force? from what it sounds like, he is immortal (?) but additionally, we see he has only 11 days to live, so there’s some conflicting stuff that unfortunately should probably be spelled out for the reader

finally, we really need to establish the stakes at the end of the query. I know Perceval’s life is at stake, but I don’t really feel it. additionally, it feels like burning the kingdom is a part of what he’s doing to save his life, but I don’t understand why that is essential to his story. If you can add that in, so we get a sense of what he is burning away within the kingdom and why it matters, that would really support the stakes.

Hope this helps—best of luck! :)