When Quincy, a no-blood from the slums district of Ackrum, is assigned to duel Grace Everen, a noble of bloodline magic in the Trail, it sets off a fifteen year long feud between the pair, leading up to the the Trial; the culmination of all the training and practice where the two will face off. What is at stake is their magic; the loser of the battle will forfeit their magic.

When investigator Thomas Blackwell and his sharp-tongued familiar set out to uncover the truth behind the so-called Ghost of Baker Street, they expect superstition, maybe a killer hiding behind old legends. What they find instead is far darker.

Within the house’s decaying halls, magic lingers like a curse, secrets are buried in blood, and the line between hunter and hunted begins to blur. As midnight approaches, the investigation spirals into a confrontation as the truth waiting in the cellar is nothing either of them could have imagined.

When a devastating wildfire breaks out deep in the backcountry, firefighter Johnathan Pierce is sent to stop it. But this blaze doesn’t behave like any he’s faced before — it moves with purpose, shifts without warning, and seems almost…alive.

In the chaos, a chance encounter with a mysterious woman draws him deeper into the heart of the inferno — and into a chain of events that defy logic, science, and everything he thought he knew about fire.

What begins as a routine rescue soon becomes something far more unsettling. And when the smoke clears, nothing — not the forest, not the fire, not Johnathan himself — will ever be the same.