Eternity is not a reward. It is a hostage situation.

To the world, Zagoran Vane is a pious acolyte of Clevius, the Arbiter of Works. In truth, he answers to no god but his own certainty. He has discovered what the Sevenfold Toll really promises: those who take it don't rest in the afterlife — they're bound forever to the souls of the foes they've killed, screaming in a prison of their own making.

But Zagoran doesn't hunt to kill. He hunts to curate.

He will cross the continent of Paroak collecting the most lustrous, most passionate women he can find — earning their love, their devotion, their trust — before he ends them. He believes he's building them and himself a private heaven, sparing them the void.

Aniche Casian was raised on the Guronian Coast, in a world of silk, limestone, and performed devotion — sold by her own family as a political asset, bound to a contract she never signed her name to willingly. So she turned to the forbidden worship of the Borga, the Weaver of Threads, and made a decision: she would not be the contract's victim. She would be its auditor.

Their collision is inevitable — and everlasting.