Ashes of the Bound - Diadora Dread

Lar is an Imperian witch quarantined on a military base in the Human Realm. The soldiers call her necessary but never worthy. A weapon wrapped in ritual. Her clan serves a race that would rather forget they exist, their magic reduced to service, their worth measured in obedience.

When Lar performs the Gravefall, she crosses into the land of the dead to bring back trapped souls. The generals say it's salvation. The witches know it's penance. But during one descent, Lar learns not every soul is meant to be rescued.

Mance is a patient at the Correctional Facility for Exposed Youth. The doctors say the details will heal him. That confession is the cure. So Mance tells them everything. The dreams, the darkness, the figure that lingers when the lights go out. They smile when he speaks, record every word, and whisper their mantra back to him: the details will heal you, the details will cure you.

But the more he remembers, the stronger it becomes.

The line between waking and dream blurs, and soon Mance can't tell if the Shadow Man followed him out of sleep... or if he never truly left the dark.

Two souls: one walking through the realm of the dead, one haunted by what lives within his head, bound by forces neither can see. Together, they are the beginning of something far greater... and far darker than either can fathom.

Book One of the Ashes of Bound Trilogy