Divan Drakovar had been living in Brașov, Romania, since he was six years old, ever since the morning he woke to find his parents murdered—victims of a brutal attack by thieves who broke into Castle Bran. His older brother, Caliban, then twenty, whisked him away to their mother’s family in Brașov and returned alone to the village of Bran. Divan never saw or heard from him again.
Twenty-five years later, Divan has built a life as a respected doctor, tending to the sick and crafting his own remedies in his private apothecary. But Divan is wary when an unexpected letter arrives from Caliban, begging him to return to Bran, claiming loneliness and a need for his help. Something about the letter feels… wrong.
Still, he goes—unaware that a dark secret lurks in the mist-shrouded Carpathian Mountains of 1850s Romania.
What he finds is a village gripped by fear. Shadows slither through the woods, and the people whisper of something monstrous that strikes under the full moon. Castle Bran, once his home, looms over the town like a grave marker, hiding secrets long buried. Caliban, once strong and untouchable, seems haunted by something more than solitude.
There is something in Bran. Something ancient. Something hungry.
Determined to uncover the truth, Divan begins his investigation, but the deeper he digs, the more entangled he becomes in a web of blood and betrayal. At the heart of it all is Lila, a healer with secrets of her own. Drawn together by fate and bound by something neither of them fully understands, Divan and Lila must face the darkness before it consumes them both. Yet some truths are more terrifying than the myths that hide them.