Carrion Throne of the Mireborn King
The Blackfens have swallowed the Vorath name for generations, but the mire is hungry again. When Aelis Vorath returns to the drowned estates of his bloodline, he finds his brother Malig sitting the Hungering Crown, an ancient relic of bone that whispers, commands, and feeds. Their sister Maren, once the steady heart of the family, is unraveling: torn between a leech-lord who offers dark healing, a false vision of the brother she lost, and a drowned god surfacing from beneath the peat. Brannoc the Leech-Lord has waited decades for a Vorath womb to breed a worthy heir; Lady Sevraine of House Ulm arrives with an envoy's mask and a knife behind it; and in the deep places, the Mire-Wyrm coils around a throne of corpses that was never truly empty. Every alliance is a trap, every kindness a hook, and the Crown does not crown, it consumes. To save Maren, Aelis must either destroy his own blood or sit the throne himself. To destroy the Crown, someone must be devoured by it. In the Blackfens, the only way out is down, and the only way home is through teeth.