THE UNSEEN PATH

In a kingdom where silence is survival, a boy who was never meant to be noticed is about to become the most dangerous man alive. Caelan was the kind of boy people's eyes slid past—too small to matter, too quiet to remember. On the day of the Choosing Ceremony, he prayed to be overlooked, to be sent to the fields and forgotten. Instead, he was claimed by the one man in the kingdom who valued invisibility above all else: Master Vorben, the King's Shadow. The Shadow hasn't taken an apprentice in twenty years. He is a figure of rumor and fear—the silent blade, the ghost of the greenwood, the man who can walk through a crowded room and leave no memory of his passing. Now, Caelan must learn his craft: how to move without sound, see without being seen, and kill without leaving a trace. But the kingdom is under threat from more than just the mountain warlord Karg and his marauders. In the mist-shrouded villages of the Sundering Pass, people are vanishing without a trace—no struggle, no bodies, just cold hearths and half-eaten meals. Something ancient and terrible has awakened in the mountains, and it is harvesting something far more precious than gold: the very souls of the kingdom's people. As Caelan trains in the arts of stealth, observation, and deception, he discovers that the gray cloak of a Shadow carries a weight far heavier than he ever imagined. He will learn to track a fox through a snow-covered forest and lose himself in a crowded marketplace. He will mend a child's broken leg by candlelight and unmask a spy with a single wrong answer. But the most important lesson is the hardest: the price of a secret is often a life, and the line between justice and cruelty is razor-thin. When Vorben and Caelan capture one of the nightmare creatures haunting the pass—a Fetch, a servant of the ancient Hush-Queen—they must decide whether to destroy it or attempt the impossible: communication. For the only way to defeat an enemy that feeds on silence and memory is to understand it. And understanding may cost them everything.