In the shadows of a fractured system, a rogue pack of Guardians known only as The Venandi are on the trail of their biggest hunt: an elusive Kell--Sivrak, Scion of the Shadowkin--whose power threatens the fragile boundary between life and Light. Sivrak is the beholder of an ancient artifact, the Res Temporis--a necromantic crystal capable of raising the dead. But this Kell doesn't seek resurrection. He forges something stranger. Something older. Lightbearing-Eliksni. When the pack is saved by one of the very creatures they were sent to destroy-a lone lightbearer-wolf with a Ghost and a past-their mission fractures. Bound by a life-debt, hunted by their own command, and haunted by the ethics of warfare, the Hunters must decide: Are monsters born... or made?