The Hollow Crown of Verrath

When Mira Vance unseals the final letter of a dead archivist in the smuggler's Archive, she finds a partial map and a single warning: the crown of Verrath is waking. Three centuries ago, Lord Cassian Verrath made a bargain with a sea-wraith to save his starving fleet, and the price was his line, his kingdom, and the souls of every soul bound to his salt-cursed coast. Now the Spider, a patient, faceless sorcerer, has begun moving the pieces into place to finish what Lord Cassian started. Hunted across the realms, Mira joins forces with Cassian's exiled heir, the reluctant spy Joren Hale, and the blind priestess Yselle, whose visions of a cartographer named First Vance hint that Mira's role was foretold long ago. To stop the Spider, she must complete the map her predecessor died protecting, one that leads to a sunken throne where a drowned king waits to rise. But the crown offers power to whoever claims it, and not every ally intends to resist. As the sea-wraith stirs beneath the waves and Brother Talen's faith begins to fracture, Mira must choose: destroy the crown and lose the only weapon that could save her world, or wear it, and risk becoming the next Lord Cassian Verrath.