The Orphans of Nilad: Book 1 of The Nosam Chronicles

They don't know who to trust. They don't even know who found them. But they know what they'd sacrifice for.

Four outcasts arrive in a fractured town carrying scars they don't talk about and a mysterious letter that might lead to a way home. It promises a relic. It promises answers. It promises, in the careful language of someone who knows exactly what they're doing, that what was taken from them might still be found.

They know it's probably a trap.

They follow it anyway — because when you've already lost everything, hope stops feeling like a virtue and starts feeling like a dare.

Nilad is rotting from the inside. Its trade roads have gone silent, its people are vanishing, and whatever is moving in the dark beyond its walls isn't stopping. The town needs saving. The four of them need answers. Neither is going to come easy — and the closer they get to the truth, the more they begin to suspect that whatever buried it doesn’t want it found.

Some things are lost on purpose. Some doors are sealed for a reason.

They're going to open them anyway.