To carry his wife home, he must become the horror the underworld fears.
“I will carry you out of this underworld,” I tell her, “so the sun can touch your face once more.”
Menander is one of the last Auralantans alive, the hunted heir of a fallen kingdom. When the Infernal Gate grinds open beneath the ruins of Kale Mora and a horde of ravenous monsters spills out to feed on the villages below, Menander and his wife slip through before it slams shut. Their mission: seize a tome of blood sorcery bound in the skin of murdered kings, before the evil that drinks from its pages grows any stronger.
Within hours, his wife is dead.
Her body hangs cold across his shoulder, yet it refuses to rot. The gate has vanished into solid rock. Ahead sprawls Kale Mora itself: the City of Torment, the City of Hatred and the City of Death, ruled by a fallen Auralantan empress and crawling with abominations that feast on mortal flesh.
Stripped of his map, his wife and any road home, Menander forges a pact in fire and blood with the Maiden of Marsis, a towering spirit who ferries the damned. She sears her brand into his hand and floods his veins with the strength of five men and the rage of the underworld. Her terms: deliver the tome within three days, or surrender his soul to Kale Mora for eternity.
Soon the monsters whisper of a hunter who stalks their halls and leaves no one breathing. Every kill feeds the rage she planted in him, and hour by hour, the man his wife loved bleeds away.
Menander swore the sun would touch her face again. Now he must pray enough of him survives to walk back out.
