Elias Mourne was born with a Black Seal.
In a world where a person's Seal determines their worth, their power, and their right to exist, a Black Seal means nothing. No Path, no future, and no place among the living.
For nineteen years, he has survived at the edges of Greyhollow, doing work no one else will touch, eating what no one else wants, invisible in the only way a cursed man can be. Until the morning a body turns up at the edge of the Ashwaste, burned with symbols older than any living language.
Until a Seal Hunter rides into town, looks directly at Elias across a crowded street, and says, "There you are."
The hunt that follows will force him to confront three truths the world buried long before he was born, why his Seal is black, what shattered the gods, and what he was made to become.
The answer to all three is the same.
And it will break everything.