Hikiiiiiii
There are stories people tell their children so they will behave, and then there are stories people refuse to tell at all.
In the mountains, they still whisper of a woman who could speak to the dead. They called her cursed. They called her a witch. They killed her for what she could see.
Her daughter survived.
Years later, Maria lives alone among the trees, carrying the same strange gift her mother died for. Quiet, sharp and fiercely guarded, she knows the old rituals and the names of spirits that most people have long forgotten. She has spent years trying to leave her mother's shadow behind.
Then a royal messenger finds her.
And far from the mountains, another strange man is being dragged into the same mystery.
Elixar was found half-dead in a forest years ago and taken in by a reclusive monk. He remembers almost nothing of the life he had before, but he can see the dead, and the dead seem remarkably fond of finding him. Aloof, infuriatingly careless and far more capable than he lets anyone believe, Elixar wants nothing to do with kings, curses or ancient gods.
Unfortunately, the King does not give him a choice.
When a series of mysterious deaths begins to tear through the royal family, King Yeongju summons Maria and Elixar to the palace. What begins as an investigation into a seemingly ordinary curse soon leads them toward forgotten temples, forbidden rituals and a history the royal family has spent generations burying.
Something ancient has awakened.
Something that remembers.
And the deeper Maria and Elixar venture into the palace's secrets, the more they begin to realize that the dead are not simply haunting the kingdom.
They are waiting for someone to remember why they died.