Jess Rae

In the aftermath of the Sovereign’s fall, Seryth wears the Hollow’s crown—a living relic of root and light that ties her to the land’s oldest power. But the ember that nearly consumed the realm still breathes deep beneath the roots, and its hunger has only grown.

What grows in the silence after power falls? Seryth was never meant to carry the Hollow’s voice. Raised by the Rite to obey, not question, she only knew two things: keep her head down—and survive.

When nineteen-year-old Elara returns to her grandmother’s ridge house in the Appalachian hollow, she finds more than heirlooms waiting. A sycamore tree as pale as bone stands watch, a cracked pocket watch stops at 10:17 each day, and a ledger filled with rules whispers what it costs to live here.

When Jerica Whitthorne returns to Briar’s Hollow to claim her late grandmother’s house, she expects peeling paint and bad memories—not a blood-deep curse that wakes the moment she steps onto the porch.

The forest crowned her. The thorns obey her. But power never comes without sacrifice. Seryth has survived the Hollow—but not unscathed. No longer the voiceless girl feared and forgotten, she now wears the thorns of a sovereign bound to a land that hungers for blood and memory.

When artist Mara Ellison inherits a flood-bitten Victorian on the edge of a Southern river, she finds the house already knows her name—and expects her to learn its rules.

When Celia Vale inherits the crumbling estate of Graysmire, she expects loneliness and ruin. What she finds instead is a house that breathes in silence, watches through its walls, and whispers with the voices of the dead.

In a world held together by a fragile lattice of ancient magic, darkness stirs beneath the surface—an unstoppable tide led by the Hollow King, a merciless force bent on unraveling all that binds the realm.

The hive is not dead. Though Celia and Ambrose sever its first heart, the silence spreads deeper, twisting roots into the soil of the village itself. As suspicion turns the townsfolk into enemies, the pair must descend into tunnels no one dared enter, where skulls whisper and memories bleed.