SHE CAME LOOKING FOR IMMORTALITY. SHE FOUND SOMETHING THAT WOULD NEVER LET HER GO. For two thousand years, Ayesha has waited beneath the ruins of a forgotten city. Beautiful. Ageless. Trapped. Long ago, she entered the Pillar of Fire believing it would grant her the one gift humanity has always coveted: eternal life. Instead, the ancient flame gave her immortality at a price she could never have imagined—and bound her to a darkness that has been patiently waiting beneath the ruins ever since. Now a military expedition has entered the dead city of Kôr, following a trail of impossible records, vanished explorers, and a secret the world was never meant to uncover. Major Wren expected ancient ruins. He did not expect Ayesha. He did not expect the woman who has survived centuries of isolation to become their only guide through a place where corridors shift, memories disappear, and the dead do not always remain dead. And he certainly did not expect to care about her. But something beneath the city has noticed them. It has been waiting. It knows their names. It knows their fears. And one by one, it is learning how to make them disappear—not merely from the world, but from history itself. Ayesha has spent two thousand years believing she understood her prison. She was wrong. Now, with the Pillar of Fire burning once again and an ancient hunger reaching beyond the ruins, she must decide what she is willing to sacrifice for the people who have given her something she thought she had lost forever: a reason to stop waiting. Some doors should never be opened. Some loves should never survive. And some things have been waiting far too long to be remembered.