Eldritch

Nineteen years before the story begins, a Lyverian slave gives birth in the undercroft of a Vonkovyan temple.

Nineteen years before the story begins, a Lyverian slave gives birth in the undercroft of a Vonkovyan temple. The infant's eyes glow silver—an abomination in the clergy's doctrine. Sacton Crain slits the mother's throat as she chokes out a dying prophecy: an ancient power loosed from thrall will smother two worlds in pestilent blight. A mute acolyte is ordered to carry the baby to The Eating Woods as sacrifice, but the forest claims the acolyte instead. The Crone Witch finds the abandoned infant guarded by ravens, disguises her silver eyes with a blood-binding spell, and leaves her on the doorstep of an old winemaker named Godfrey Bronwick. The baby will grow up as Maevyth—the lorn, the foundling no one wanted.

Alive but uncrossable—Aleysia traps them in a dying world

Beneath the Crone Witch's hovel, Zevander—a centuries-old Aethyrian assassin cursed with sablefyre—lifts Maevyth's sister Aleysia from a freezing pantry. She breathes but won't wake, her body unnaturally cold, no sign of the spider-plague consuming the mortal lands. Maevyth's relief fractures when Zevander delivers a devastating truth: mortals cannot cross the Umbravale, the magical barrier between worlds. Aleysia will never reach Aethyria. The discovery chains Maevyth to Mortasia, where every village has been ravaged and monstrous infected creatures prowl each night. Worse, Zevander's vivicantem—the magical element sustaining his body and power—is nearly depleted. Without it, he cannot summon his flame, cannot protect them, and will eventually descend into madness. Two lovers and an unconscious sister, stranded in a world eating itself alive.

Zevander's mind fractures as his power starves itself

Trapped in the hovel for days, Zevander's deprivation manifests in terrifying episodes. He wanders to the Umbravale in a trance, attempting to burn it down with black flame, remembering nothing afterward. He hallucinates voices—his former abuser General Loyce whispering degradation—and mistakes Maevyth's innocent words for cruelties from his past. The dark veins branching from the scar on his cheek spread toward his eye. At night, searing chest pain nearly drops him, relieved only by clutching Maevyth's stolen scorpion necklace and willing her face into his thoughts. When he tries to warm Aleysia with his flame, nothing comes. The fire that once answered his every command now flickers and dies in his palm, and each failure marks another step toward a descent he cannot reverse.

Decades of slavery teach a boy to summon black flame Sent to the Cinderbone Mines as a boy for his father's crimes, young Zevander endures years of brutal labor, whippings, and starvation. In Caligorya—the shadow realm between consciousness and death—a cloaked stranger called Alastor teaches him forbidden glyphs, including the…