The Hollow Crown of Ashvarn
Eighteen days on a frozen road. Eighteen days of carting the dead toward Wren's Crossing, where the necromancer Vaelen Korth hoped the rot would finally stop spreading. It does not. The corpses walk, the marsh-haunts rise incorporeal from the bogs, and somewhere beneath the ruined city, a chorus of Choir-citizens begins to sing a hymn no living throat was ever meant to hear. When Vaelen's brother Maren is drawn into waking visions of the long-dead tyrant King Ashvarn Mourne, the brothers are bound to a single terrible question: who is the Hollow Crown trying to crown now? Lord Malachar Dunmire's scavengers are already picking the bones of the kingdom, and the Custodians who once sealed the Crown beneath the marsh are scattered, hunted, or hollowed out into Choir-husks. Even Seren Oathkein, the last Warden Captain's most trusted blade, may already be lost to possession. With his apprentice Daven watching his master unravel and the marsh-haunts learning to wear the faces of the living, Vaelen must decide whether to destroy the Crown, claim it, or let the kingdom burn. The Crown has waited centuries for a worthy vessel. It is done waiting.