The Rot Beneath Blackchapel

Eleanor Vance has spent her whole life avoiding Blackchapel, but when a solicitor's letter arrives smelling of old paper and something sweeter, rot, perhaps, she has no choice but to return to the decaying village that swallowed her grandmother whole. Armed with nothing but a brass key wrapped in oilcloth, Eleanor steps out of a taxi and into fog so dense it erases the world beyond the headlights. The villagers she once knew are gone. Those who remain watch her with empty eyes, and something terrible stirs beneath the earth of Hollow Marrow. Great-Aunt Minerva warns her that the house remembers. Father Callum Reeves urges her to leave before the bell tolls. And in the old well, something smiles back. As the Ash Figure rises and the absent villagers return, wrong, crawling, smiling with too many teeth, Eleanor discovers her family was not just tied to Blackchapel. It was bound to it. Her sister Seraphine has already been taken, replaced by a doppelganger that knows Eleanor's secrets. With the village closing in and the rot spreading through every doorway, Eleanor faces an impossible choice: burn the house that holds her sister's echo and sever the bloodline forever, or become the next vessel for a hunger older than the stones.