The monster sings with the voices of the dead. The village goes to the water anyway.
A fishing village where the sea has swallowed half the streets. The young have gone. The old remain. Something in the flooded ruins beneath is singing, and those who listen hear the voices of their own dead. They walk into the water at night. They don't come back.
Tarahn arrives hunting the source. But this beast does not simply kill — it offers something far crueller than death. And it knows exactly what voice will bring the hunter to the water's edge.
Something beautiful and terrible dwelling in the flooded ruins below — a shape rendered in translucent flesh and bioluminescent light, trailing through the submerged streets like a ghost bride. Its song resonates through water and bone. Those who hear it do not hear a monster. They hear the person they miss most.
A young widow who goes to the water's edge every night to hear her dead husband's voice. She knows it isn't truly him. She goes anyway. She is drawn to Tarahn because she recognises another person shackled to their grief — and she is the first woman to stop him in his tracks.
This beast weaponises the one thing Tarahn cannot defend against. The hunt forces him into the water, into the song, and into a memory so vivid and so whole that walking away from it may be the hardest thing he has ever done.
Tarahn at his rawest. The novel forces him to confront the question that will define his early journey: is he hunting to save the world, or is he hunting because if he stops moving, the grief will kill him?