Debt of the Deep

In the fog-choked Mendip Hills, history isn't buried; it's waiting for a signature. Elias Vance, a disgraced architectural historian fleeing a high-profile scandal in London, thinks he has found sanctuary in the crumbling remains of Blackwood Hall. But the estate he has inherited is not merely a house?it is a sentient ledger. In the village of Oakhaven, the soil has turned "bitter," the crops bleed a dark ichor, and an ancient ritual known as the Reconciliation is decades overdue. As the new Master of the Hall, Elias discovers that his family's wealth was built on a terrifying contract with the land itself: for every harvest taken, a weight of life must be returned to the marrow.

What begins as a struggle to settle a neglected estate soon spirals into a global architectural nightmare. Using the "Calculus of the Marrow," Elias begins to rebuild Blackwood Hall, but the materials aren't stone and timber?they are the memories, rigidities, and very bodies of those the house consumes. From the soot-stained streets of a transformed London to the amber-encased stillness of a world perfected by alien logic, Debt of the Deep is a harrowing exploration of the price of permanence and the horror of a world that refuses to let its history rot.

Author Ethan Ross delivers a masterful folk-horror epic, weaving a visceral tapestry of anatomical architecture and cosmic dread that asks the ultimate question: when the land finally calls in its Tithe, what will be left of the Architect?