The Hollow Vow

For nine hundred mornings, Maren Kesslar has climbed the Veilwall, the ancient stone rampart that separates the marshlands from whatever darkness stirs beyond its crumbling parapets. As captain of the wall's sentries, she has spent her life guarding a border no one truly understands, until a dying rider crashes through the haze with a warning: the Hollow King is rising, and the oaths that once bound him are rotting from within. Pulled from her vigil by Queen Lyra Ashemark, Maren is drawn into the court's fractured politics. Her brother Kieran carries secrets he cannot speak aloud. Sera Dain, the rider who crossed the marsh, brings a truth Maren cannot ignore. And Darian Vane, a man bound to the very darkness she was raised to hold back, offers a choice no one else will: trust the crown and watch the old vows collapse, or trust the Hollow King's servant and break the wall herself. As Sister Yvenne's prophecies grow louder and Lord Caelum Drage's ambitions sharpen, Maren must decide what a vow is worth when every promise has already been hollowed out. The breach is coming. The question is not whether it opens, but whose hands tear it wide.