Book 2: The Echoing Cost

When every act of healing steals a piece of the healer, compassion itself becomes a battlefield.
Kaelen, scarred by the Ash-Marks of a thousand borrowed pains, and Garret, haunted by the hollow silence left by the Weavers, must cross deserts, marshes, and the haunted ruins of the First Folk in search of a truth that could mend—or finally shatter—the Heartstone. But every choice carries an echoing cost: a child saved for a goat lost, a song of grief silenced for a lifetime of obedience, a love remembered for a soul erased.
In The Echoing Cost, the fragile beauty of feeling is tested against the terrible allure of silence, and the fate of empathy itself hangs in the balance.