Crest in Ashes

A sickle in his hands, dirt beneath his nails, and a world that measures his worth in gold he'll never have—Kale Elden knows nothing beyond the wheat fields of his dying village. He cannot read. He cannot write his own name. And in a kingdom where literacy is a luxury taxed beyond a farmer's reach, that is simply the life he was born into. Until the morning the Demon Beast Forest disgorges a coordinated horde, driven not by hunger but by masked figures cloaked in black—agents of the Eternal Fla