Beneath the Clouded Hearth

Two wanderers, a ghost's unfinished business, and a cursed sea full of answers neither asked for.

The northwest coast is a haunted stretch of water — fog-wrapped islands, weathered fishing villages, and the restless dead. Garbo Nightsky, a ranger who reads the wilderness like a living map, and Jamhorn Krikoris, a bard carrying a curse he doesn't yet understand, have arrived in Driftwood Landing at exactly the wrong moment. A ghost ship flying the colors of a hanged captain has begun attacking vessels along the coast, and the party's only lead is a former first mate with thirty gold and a grief she has carried for twenty years. What the two are slowly uncovering is bigger than a single haunted ship. The crimson flag at the center of the mystery belonged to Captain Callista Merrow, dead these two decades — and someone has been using it to drag her back from rest and turn her name into a weapon. The trail leads to Vasha Kell, Merrow's former quartermaster and the flag's new master. It also winds, unexpectedly, toward the origins of Jamhorn's curse, which Merrow's spirit recognized as something ancient: a deep-water thing, tangled in salt and bad bargains. The answers are close. But the sea has a way of keeping its secrets.