A GRIMDARK FANTASY OF BLOOD, RUIN, AND UNFORGIVEN MAGICSOME VOWS ARE FORGED IN FIRE. OTHERS ARE SEALED IN BONE AND ASH. Twenty cycles ago, Master Smith Jon Thorne paid a devastating toll. Under the glare of a Blue Harvest Moon, a desperate ritual tore the fabric of reality, claiming his wife and leaving him with a shattered body. Armed only with a heavy walking stick and a final, agonized command from the woman he loved, Jon fled the copper-scented fog of Aetherfell to hide his infant daughter, Ysana, from the dark paths.
He built a quiet life in the heavy, watchful silence of the woods. He hammered iron, kept his head down, and buried the past. But magic in this world exacts a heavy price, and the dark paths do not forget the ones who walk them.
When Ysana finds a reality-warping relic known as the Wyrdglass and it stirs to life in her hands, it brings with it a shadow-bound wanderer and the suffocating scent of storm-air. The long-buried secrets of Jon's family are violently unearthed. The old wards are failing, and the horrors of the Twilight World have found them at last-led by a necro-luminous queen who wears a terrifyingly familiar face.
To keep his daughter safe, the crippled Smith must lead her back into the nightmare he sacrificed everything to escape.
THE TOLL IS BEING COUNTED. THE GATE IS OPEN.FATE IS NOT A CHOICE. IT IS A SENTENCE.