Fort Ashenmere is the empire's most remote prison — built on a cliff above a cursed forest, staffed by soldiers who drew the shortest straw. Warden Tomas Breck runs it with grim efficiency and a single rule: no one goes into the forest. Then the Crown sends him a new prisoner he wasn't expecting — Lady Orin Sable, a former spymaster's apprentice convicted of selling state secrets. She's too high-profile for a normal prison and too dangerous to leave unchained, so Ashenmere it is. She's also the most interesting person Tomas has spoken to in four years, which is a problem. When prisoners start disappearing — not escaping, *vanishing*, from locked cells with no trace — Tomas needs someone who thinks like a spy, not a soldier. Orin will help, but her price is one hour of unchained movement per day. What they find isn't a prison break. Something in the forest is taking people *in*. And the fort wasn't built to keep prisoners locked up. It was built to keep something else locked *down*.