Red Rising fans have been waiting a long time for Red God. Since Light Bringer came out in 2023, the community has been following every bit of news for the seventh and final book in the saga.
Earlier this year, author Pierce Brown ruled out the book hitting shelves in Summer 2026, which was a disappointment but not quite a surprise at this point. But recently, Brown added a hat emoji to his Instagram bio and for anyone who has been following the series closely, that is a direct reference to none other than the Hat of Death!
That's the Hat of Death right there 👒😨 pic.twitter.com/vgViEfN8Lx
— ♖ (@Espectadora_FCB) October 2, 2026
The Hat of Death is a physical hat that Pierce Brown keeps and uses during the writing process. When he reaches a scene that needs a major character death but has not settled on who should go, he writes the names of the characters involved on slips of paper, drops them in, and draws one at random. Whoever comes out does not survive the book.
Brown talked through the whole origin on the Wildmen Podcast last month. He started using the hat in 2011 while writing Red Rising, and his reasoning was straightforward. "I wanted to illustrate the capriciousness of war," he said. He felt that if every death was quietly planned to protect his favorite characters, he was losing something honest in the storytelling. As he put it, "I felt I was being dishonest if it was all planned and I was not killing off important characters."
Hat of Death has "arrested" the writing process for Red God
On the Wildmen Podcast, Brown confirmed that he has already used the hat for Red God and that the result stopped the writing for a while. Talking about how he has used it across the series, he said: "I've done it several other times throughout the series and I've pulled one for Red God and it has arrested the writing process for a bit."
He also mentioned, almost in passing, that he does not travel with the hat. He keeps it at home and each pull is its own separate event in the process. The fact that the draw then stalled the writing suggests whoever came out was a character he had significant plans for, which is very similar to how he described the original Pax situation years ago.
Several deaths in the acclaimed series have come from the hat, but the earliest and most discussed one is Pax au Telemanus from Red Rising. Brown also described the whole experience on the podcast.
He shared that when he got to the scene, he put all the character names in except Darrow, who is the narrator and had to survive. His reaction when he drew was not good. "I pulled out a character and I was like [bleep]," he said, "because I had plans for that character." He put the slip back in and reached for another draw, then stopped himself. "I put it back in and I'm like, I'll try again," he said. "I'm like, no, that's cheating."
Part of what made it possible to stick to the rule were the circumstances he was in at the time. Brown described assuming "no one's going to read this thing," given he had written six books before Red Rising, collected around 130 rejections from agents, and was living with his parents and moving between jobs. He said the rule existed because "if I can't be honest with myself," the whole exercise falls apart. He went with the first draw.
Brown later noted with some amusement that Pax ended up being "most people's favorite character in the first book." He had a large story arc planned around Pax and the Telemanuses that had to be abandoned entirely. He has said the story was better for it in the end, even though it was a hard draw to accept.
Other deaths that have come from the Hat
Pax is not the only one though. Seraphina au Raa in Dark Age was also a hat draw. At a Light Bringer Q&A, Brown confirmed that Tongueless was drawn from the hat as well, and shared the backstory he had originally planned for the character. Tongueless was going to be a former high-ranking leader of the Syndicate who had been pushed out by Lilath when she took over. That arc was dropped as soon as the name came out.
Brown has also spoken about the difference between the two kinds of deaths he writes. Some feel like a natural conclusion to a character's arc. Others feel like the story cuts off before something is finished. The second kind are more true to life, he has said, and they tend to be the ones that stay with him. He mentioned Trigg and Fitchner as examples of that second kind. Draws from the hat tend to produce more of those.
At Dragonsteel Nexus in late 2025, Brown wore a hoodie to his spotlight panel that read "Per Aspera Ad Trauma," playing on the series motto Per Aspera Ad Astra. The back of the hoodie had a chart of character deaths listed by location and page number. He also told fans at the panel to expect two hat pulls in Red God, which the crowd did not take particularly well.
Brown adding the hat emoji to his Instagram bio is the most recent piece of this. It might read as a sign that this part of the writing process has moved past the stall he described on the podcast.
So, my read is that the hat has done what it needed to do and the writing is moving again. The emoji is potentially Brown marking that something has already happened and is now part of the draft.
Brown's publisher at Penguin Random House confirmed that Red God does not have a release date at this time.
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