Face in the Plaster

Elara Vance sees what others miss. As a restoration artist with prosopagnosia—face blindness—she's learned to identify people by details others ignore. But when she's hired to restore a damaged fresco in a remote Italian castle, she uncovers something far darker than centuries-old paint: a pattern of ritual murder spanning five hundred years.Forty-seven aristocratic families across Europe have been sacrificing daughters for generations, hiding murders behind tradition and wealth. When Elara threatens to expose them, an ancient hunger beneath the castle takes the one thing she relies on—her face. She becomes literally invisible, forgotten the moment anyone looks away.Now Elara must navigate a world where she cannot be seen or remembered, racing to document patterns of evil before they claim more victims. From drowning rituals in Verona to tower falls in Vienna, from sealed crypts in France to the corrupt halls of Italian courts, she builds a network of survivors determined to break cycles that have endured for centuries.But visibility has a price. To testify, to be believed, to change systems—Elara must restore what was taken from her. She must choose between the protection of invisibility and the power of being seen. Between documenting evil and stopping it. Between saving herself and saving the daughters still marked for death.A haunting literary thriller about identity, memory, and the courage required to expose what powerful families have hidden in plain sight for five hundred years.