The Hollow Crown of Asterin

Vera Calloway is a deserter, a fugitive, and the last thing standing between the Neon District and a slaughter. Crouched in the acid rain behind a confiscated pulse-pistol, she has thirty-six hours to assassinate Lord Magistrate Valerius before his puppet regime tips the city into open war with the Gloomsworn Tribe. The hit comes courtesy of a Mysterious Client whose motives dangle just out of reach, and whose golem , a towering relic of an older, crueler law , serves as both escort and executioner. Vera's path cuts through the rain-slick alleys of the Silver Mile, where Survivors whisper of a Hollow Host rising beneath the streets, and past checkpoints manned by Nightwarden Commander Rhea Voss, whose loyalty to the badge is the only thing keeping her from putting a round through Vera's skull. Complicating the run is Silas Marrow, her old handler, now embedded in the Magistrate's inner court as Dorian Ashvale's shadow, and Dorian himself , a Crimson Hand Lieutenant whose ambition runs deeper than his orders suggest. To reach Valerius, Vera must first pass Lady Thorne, bluff past a resurrected Water Guardian, and survive a Hollow Host Creature stalking the undercity. At the Heartwood Altar, where the city's oldest bargain was struck in blood, she finally learns why the Architect chose her for this errand: the crown is not a prize. It is a hunger with her name already carved into its teeth. By dawn, Vera will either pull the trigger and vanish, or take the crown's weight herself , and remake Asterin into something no one survives.