Seventeen-year-old Theo Marsh has always written off his family’s Redkiln County Guise tradition as small-town folk pageantry. Face-blind since childhood, he navigates Marrow Hill High by coats, shoes and desk positions instead of faces, and his sights are set firmly on a future in science, not folklore. Everything shifts when a road-widening project on Route 402 cuts into an ancient burial mound sealed for two thousand years. After lead archaeologist Professor Nye falls into a mysterious catatonic state inside the tomb, the state’s shadowy Office of Unfiled Phenomena drafts Theo in place of his missing mother — the region’s last recognized tradition bearer. Reluctantly pulled into the rain-soaked dig site, Theo makes a stark discovery: the drumbeats, chants and hand gestures he learned for the annual parade are not theater. They are an ancient “collar”: the old, quiet magic built to hold what belongs underground exactly where it rests.