The oath was the weapon. The loyalty was the key.

A decade ago, a desperate king made a pact with something ancient beneath the capital – a demonic entity that promised salvation from foreign invasion in exchange for a price paid in human lives. Now the plague marks spread across the kingdom, dark veins climbing the skin of the living, turning them into hollow shells that walk north and do not return.

Serik was once an Iron Circle knight – loyal, obedient, unquestioning.

He carried a sealed message into the dark without asking what it contained. That message opened the door. That loyalty started the plague.

Three years after abandoning the capital, a dying squire’s letter pulls Serik back into the city he fled. His sister is marked. The pact is accelerating. And the only way to sever the binding is to descend into the entity’s heart, reach the throne room, and break the crown that anchors the kingdom to its hunger.

The cost of closing the door is the same as the cost of opening it: everything.

The Hollowed King is the first volume of The Ashen Crown Saga – a grimdark fantasy of complicity, corruption, and the terrible weight of oaths sworn without question.