A Blade For The Ghost-the Mist Territories

He fights because he hopes he will finally lose. In the Drowned Cities of the East—a graveyard of black rain and rotting salt—Slip Fisherknife is a ghost in the shadows. A sinuous mustelid built for the sinew and angles of the tight spaces between heartbeats, he has spent years as the "champion-killer" of the Circle. He leaves behind bodies and never stays to watch them cool, but Slip isn't running from the law or the feudal Marten Clans—he is running from the internalized, accusing voice of a father who died so he could live. While the corporate wars of the West scorch the horizon, a localized horror is waking in the East. The Mist is rolling inland, a semi-sentient presence that whispers the names of the dead, luring the living into the Deep Forest. There, sentient roots twine through the ribcages of the fallen to absorb and keep what they remember. When a silent dog pup named Snap follows him from the fighting pits, Slip is thrust into the role of a reluctant guardian. Driven by a summons from an ancient Entity that speaks in his father's tone, Slip must journey into the heart of the forest to face a choice: a fabricated return to the "Symmetry" of his lost past or a stand to protect the Canopy Villages of his brother, Kelp, against an environment that has finally begun to wake up. A Blade for the Ghost is a gritty, Seinen-style dark fantasy survival horror set in the shared universe of The Broken Age. In a world where the Builders are only ghosts and every scar is earned, Slip must finally answer the question: Is a life spent running worth more than a life spent standing still? The forest is calling. And this time, there is nowhere left to run.