the story
The dead in this world don't leave.
They settle into the things they loved — a teapot, a loom, a sword — and their families carry them, draw on them, and go to war over them.
Win Vell grew up safe in the one town the war couldn't touch, until the day it reached in and took someone he loved. Now he crosses a burning land on the trail of the killer, alongside his best friend Joss, a young Kindler healer named Lyra, and Verity, a scribe who never speaks.
But Win carries his father's creed like a blade he refuses to draw: never take a life — not even this one. And as he hunts, the dead keep choosing him. Win is an anomaly no one in the world understands, and the last time the dead chose someone, the world broke.
He's determined to prove there's another way — even for the man he's hunting.