The Hollow Crown of Ashvale
In the Veiled Territories, where entire cities are swallowed from memory and forgotten by the world, cartographer's daughter Miren Ashvale inherits her father's final work, a map stained with his own blood, charting a kingdom that no record confirms ever existed. The Hollow Crown of Ashvale is no legend. It is a living throne, and it has already devoured the Slain Wardens, the Frozen Citizens, and her own father, the Cartographer-Father whose dying vision still flickers at the edge of her mind. Hunted across shadow-haunted roads by the Hollow Hounds, tracked by the silver-eyed child and the silent Ferryman of Mire, Miren finds unlikely allies in Aldric Vane, a disgraced swordsman haunted by his own hollowed past, and Old Tomas, keeper of secrets older than the kingdom itself. The Memory Merchants trade in stolen recollections. The Death-Keepers guard the Compact Leaders who would see the crown buried forever. And threading through every shadow, the Remembrancer, a spectral force that wears the faces of the consumed, waits to unmake her piece by piece. With her sister Thessaly's soul bound to the throne's hunger and the Lady Vesper Mournwood offering a dangerous pact, Miren must journey to the Spire's Librarian for answers that may destroy her. To free the First Miren, to save Thessaly, to stop the Eaten Spaces from swallowing the world, she must claim the Pale Throne herself, or die trying. But the crown does not crown. It consumes. And the only question that remains is what Miren Ashvale will be willing to forget in order to win.