For fans of S.A. Chakraborty, Robin Hobb, and Martha Wells's Witch King, a page-turning standalone fantasy of necromancy and cursed magic from Jenn Lyons, the acclaimed author of The Ruin of Kings.

Centuries ago, necromancy almost destroyed the world. That's how history remembers it.

History remembers it wrong.

Mathaiik has studied all his life to join the sacred order of the Idallik Knights, charged with defending their world from the forces of necromancy. Only vestiges of that cursed magic remain - nothing like the fabled days of the Grim Lords, the undead wizards who once nearly destroyed the world.

Until monsters once more begin to wake. But something about them is even stranger: whole forests coming alive and devouring anyone so foolish as to trespass, formerly peaceful animals mutating into savage carnivores . . . the land itself has turned upon humanity and the Knights are powerless to stop it.

It's a good thing, then, that the Grim Lords were never truly destroyed. One of their number sleeps below the Knights' very fortress. And when an army of twisted tree monsters attacks the young initiates in his charge, Math decides to do the unthinkable: he wakes her up.