Serpent's Cradle by Alex Petkov

"Keep your distance. I am drenched in filth and the slaughter's gore."

Darian is a man fracturing—brittle with exhaustion, stained by a violence that refuses to wash away. He wanders a world where the sun is but a fading memory, and the shadows have begun to mock his labours. He is driven by a singular, desperate ghost: Elika—the light he pursues through the rot, the beloved face that haunts his silence, and the only reason he refuses to fall.

But the road to her is laid in old malice and older debts.

When the Fae Monarch reaches out from the mist—cool, ethereal, and merciless—Darian is drawn into a bargain that transcends breath itself. To reach Elika, he must endure the iron-hymn of the blade and survive the basalt spires of the Drowned Shore, where the Nhaga wait to claim those who bartered the warmth of life for the cold eternity of the Deep.

As the Darksign begins to throb against his skull like a white-hot brand, Darian must decide: how much of his own humanity is he willing to bury to reclaim the only light he has ever known?

The tide devours all.
Will you be amongst the drowned?