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They say belief is suicide. They're not wrong. Where I come from, faith gets you a bullet in the head, a knock at the door that never ends well, or a name etched on a list you'll never live to see. Still, I believe. So does Basil, my only constant in a world stripped of everything soft. We've been hunted for years, slept under stone, eaten from dirt, prayed in secret, and watched good people vanish for whispering the wrong words. We've made it all these years with nothing but our prayers and each other. But then came the rumor about a sanctuary. A lie, probably. A trap, almost definitely. Basil wanted to chase it anyway, because we owed it to ourselves, he said, and to the others who share our struggle. I went with him only because I couldn't bear to watch him go alone. I should've stopped him... But now it's too late. (Includes books one and two, in the Scarred Duology.)