Shadows save me. Shadows guide me. Shadows fracture me.

Our lands are fractured. They have been split into three since before my birth, but they were not always this way. Once, we prospered, magic filling our lands before it was locked away with them: the monsters.

Now we suffer and starve even as our king grows stronger and richer. Then my sister is called upon to make the ultimate sacrifice. Unable to lose the one person I love, I take her place willingly, protecting her the only way I can.

My name is Cora Black, and I’m barely twenty years old when I’m sacrificed to the monsters. If only they knew that I crave the same darkness that lives within their monstrous facades. If only the king knew I am just as much a monster as them.