The Heartborn

The world is alive-and it remembers everything done to it.Tala Flintmark has always trusted maps more than people. A map does not lie, abandon you, or demand that you become someone else. It simply records what is there. As Tala begins her final year at Wilderlock, she expects to study dangerous creatures, master the wilderness, and earn her place among the Veyri pathfinders.Instead, she discovers that the land is changing faster than she can draw it.Kell Riven has spent his entire life trying to prove that he belongs. Born with an unfinished crownmark and a bloodline no one fully understands, he hides his fear behind reckless jokes and impossible risks. But when an ancient, six-eyed creature chooses him for reasons it refuses to explain, Kell begins to suspect that the mark he has carried since birth is not incomplete.It is waiting.When Wilderlock's living guides are stolen and a spreading white corruption begins draining color, memory, and life from everything it touches, Tala, Kell, and their closest friend, Bram, are pulled beyond every safe boundary they have ever known. Their search leads across shifting forests, hungry lakes, predator-filled cliffs, and a sea traveled by creatures so enormous that mountains grow upon their backs.There they encounter Ghaldra-an ancient Crownback carrying rivers, forests, and an entire living territory upon her shell.As Tala begins mapping Ghaldra's moving landscape, she discovers that this is no ordinary expedition. The territory listens to her. It answers her. And somewhere beneath its mountain, an old wound is beginning to open.Kell's search for the truth leads to an even more dangerous revelation. His blood connects him to Rhovaryn, the first protector of a power binding every native life in their world. The Dominion believes that power can be owned. It believes Kell can command it. And it is willing to tear open the sky, enslave ancient creatures, and drain an entire world of life to possess it.To survive, Tala and Kell must create something that has never existed before: a clan formed not by blood, birth, or obedience, but by choice. They must convince strangers to become family, earn the trust of the living land beneath them, and keep one fragile fire burning through the longest night.Because in this world, belonging is not given.It is chosen.And when the White Wound finally opens, Tala's unfinished maps reveal a terrifying truth: the enemy approaching their shore is far greater than anyone imagined-and someone they love may already be leading it home.The Heartborn is the first book in The Unbroken Shore, an immersive epic-fantasy adventure filled with ancient creatures, living landscapes, evolving Field Study maps, dangerous discoveries, found family, sacrifice, humor, and a massive cliffhanger that opens the road to Book Two.