Ashes of the Damned

Salem is eating itself alive with paranoia, but on the isolated homestead of Witch’s Back, three men face an ancient, far more terrifying truth. When an unearthed black steel blade—engraved with bizarre geometric ciphers—is brought up from an abandoned iron mine, it brings more than cold metal into the farmhouse. It harbors an ancient, insatiable soul-drinker: a dormant Death entity waiting for the right blood to wake it up. Jonah Nilsen only wanted to keep his family safe using the quiet folk magic passed down by his Norwegian mother. But when his ambitious brother Jacob and the power-hungry Isaac escalate their desperation, they cross the line into blood magic—triggering a catastrophic ritual breach in the root cellar. The ritual doesn't release the entity, but it does something worse: it tethers the Death King directly to Jacob’s bloodline and the house itself. As cattle are found surgically slaughtered with runic circles, townsfolk whisper of blue fires on the ridge, and Jacob begins losing his humanity to a cold, unnatural strength, Jonah is caught in the middle as the unwilling failsafe. Bound to the weapon through dark, prophetic nightmares, Jonah must find a way to anchor his own mind before the entity consumes his brother, destroys his home, and turns Salem into a slaughterhouse.