The Abyssal Trials

Every child born in Stormborn dies before adulthood. The curse sees to that. Elias Stone is seventeen and still breathing. In a village where nobody expected him to survive past eight, that alone makes him dangerous. When an ancient dungeon awakens beneath Stormborn's oldest building, Elias goes down. Not because he is brave. Because he has spent seventeen years watching the curse take everything from his family and he is done waiting for it to take him too. Inside the dungeon a system activates. Seven trials. Seven chances to break a curse three generations old. Each trial destroys him in a different way. Each one deposits something into his bloodline when he survives it. The more it costs him the harder he hits. That is the design. Someone built this dungeon specifically for his bloodline and Elias is only beginning to understand what that means. Then Lyra appears. She steps out of the dungeon wall calm and impossible and completely present. She says she is bound to the dungeon. She says she has been waiting. She does not say for how long and every time Elias asks she changes the subject and he notices and files it away because Elias notices everything. She goes everywhere with him. Inside the dungeon fully present. Outside it at the edge of his awareness, warm and constant. The most honest relationship he has ever had with anyone and it is built on a foundation she has not told him the full truth of yet. Because Lyra has a secret that goes back sixty years. And the closer Elias gets to breaking the curse the closer he gets to finding out what she really is. Some truths only transfer when you survive them. Elias intends to survive everything.