In the shadow-cloaked village of Thorn Hollow, where the woods hum with secrets and children vanish into the dark, seventeen-year-old Elara Veyne is cursed twice over: by the villagers who blame her for every withered crop and empty cradle, and by the Thorn Pendant she wears—a relic of her mother’s disappearance, now pulsing with a corrupting heat.
When the forest’s whispers sharpen into a song only she can hear, Elara defies the mob’s fury to follow it, dragging along Kael, the blacksmith’s sardonic son, whose loyalty is as much a mystery as the Veil itself.
What they find is no mere nightmare.
A forgotten temple, slick with ancient blood, reveals a truth that claws at Elara’s veins: her mother was no victim, but a traitor.
The Veil, a living barrier between worlds, is fraying, and the Veyne women have always been its keepers—each generation bound by thorn and sacrifice to weave its thread.
Now, the same rot that devoured Elara’s mother spreads through her, blackening her blood, as Shadowfangs stalk the woods and the stolen children scream from beyond the Veil.
To mend it, Elara must become the anchor her ancestors feared, her soul stitched into the thorns.
But the Veil is no lifeless wall. It hungers. It remembers. And it whispers promises: of power, of vengeance, of a truth that could unravel Kael’s faith and turn Elara’s sacrifice into a weapon for the twisted gods who crave the Veil’s fall.
The deeper they dig, the clearer the choice—bleed for a world that hates her, or let it burn. But some secrets are sharp enough to cut both ways.
