The Stone and Shadow Cycle

The Obsidian Conclave is a city steeped in antiquity, but its most enduring tradition is a nightmare. With every solar conjunction, a spectral blight descends—the Scourge—harvesting souls and reshaping the city's labyrinthine passages. Kaelen Thorne is the only one who remembers the countless iterations, each ending in tragic loss as the Scourge wipes out all but a fraction of the population, then resets. He has died a thousand deaths, accumulating vital knowledge about its patterns, its grotesque manifestations, and the true cost of failure. This is his final cycle, his last chance to break the curse. The chilling signal of the Veiled Matron, an ethereal, silent force behind the Scourge, always marks the beginning. She offers no words, only a palpable threat that permeates the very stone of the city. Kaelen knows that to finally confront the source of this torment, he must gather a disparate circle of five, for only five chosen souls can breach the Conclave's hidden heart. With each passing moment, he races against time and the creeping dread to unravel the true nature of the Scourge and its ancient orchestrator, before the Conclave falls to ruin one last, irreversible time.