Candles of Ash

Some things can never be explained. No prophecy foretold it. No scholar uncovered its cause. No god claimed responsibility. One evening, the sun slipped beneath the horizon as it always had, and the moon rose to claim the sky. Then came the fog. Then came the ash. And the sun never returned. Twenty years have passed beneath an endless twilight. The world is a corpse that refuses to die, choking beneath drifts of gray ash and shrouds of creeping mist. Cities stand hollow and gutted, their streets littered with bones picked clean by time. Forests have twisted into lightless graveyards where things without names stalk between the trees. What remains of humanity clings to life in scattered pockets, huddled around dying fires and crumbling walls, waiting for the darkness to finally swallow them whole. The ash changed everything. Animals became monsters. The dead refused to stay buried. And from the gloom emerged the abominations known as Ashwalkers—grotesque predators driven by instincts no living mind can comprehend. They hunt without rest, tearing apart anything unfortunate enough to draw their attention. Few who encounter them survive. Fewer still remain entirely human afterward. In this dying world, survival is measured in sacrifices. Food is scarce. Mercy is a luxury most cannot afford. Trust is the rarest commodity of all, and nearly everyone is bankrupt. Those stubborn, desperate souls who continue to wander the ruins despite the odds are known as Asheners. Some seek shelter. Some seek answers. Most are simply running from something worse than death. Among them walks Regis Kincaid, a hardened survivor whose determination has outlived better men, and Vesper, a reserved elven-vampire hybrid whose loyalty has been earned through blood, hardship, and countless nights beneath a sky devoid of dawn. Bound together by necessity and trust in a world where both are dangerous weaknesses, they carve a path through the ruins of civilization and the horrors lurking within them. Because the monsters beyond the fog are not the only things waiting in the dark. And in a world where the sun has been dead for twenty years, understanding each other may prove far more difficult—and far more dangerous—than surviving the apocalypse itself.