Book One — The Shadow of the Woods The woods outside DeepFall have always been dangerous. Gus Kent knows that better than anyone. When he leads a hunting party into the timber after something that should not exist, only he comes back — half-blind, bleeding, and carrying a warning no one in town wants to believe. Four men are dead in the trees, and whatever killed them did not behave like an animal, a man, or anything the woods should be able to hide. Paramedics Mateo Alvarez and Elara Vance answer the crash call that brings Gus back into town. What should be a bad wreck becomes the first sign that DeepFall’s darkness is no longer staying where it belongs. Something moves beyond the ambulance lights. Something waits in the trees. And Gus’s terror begins spreading faster than the blood he leaves behind. As fear grips the town, Mateo and Elara are pulled toward the truth hiding beneath the hunting stories: the monsters in the woods may not be the ones DeepFall should fear most. Because the edge of the world has started opening.