Every fifty years, one girl from the Ashveil bloodline walks into the Hollowed Dark and does not return. They call her the Tithe. I am the seventh. I walked in ready for endings. Not because I am brave but because everything worth living for had already been taken long before my name was chosen. My family did not grieve me. My people feasted the night I left. Dredh is ancient, severe, and final. He has consumed six girls before me. He does not ask questions. He does not scratch words into stone in the dark wondering what broke you. He does not do any of that. Except with me. I came here ready to disappear. What I did not prepare for was something older than death deciding it was not finished with me yet.