Oathbreaker

Every town has a monster. Garrett has stopped asking who made them.

The notice is blood-stained before he even reads it. Third one like it in as many weeks: a beast in the woods, missing livestock, a missing boy, twenty silver for whoever's desperate-or guilty-enough to go looking. Garrett's turned down better pay for worse reasons.

Eight years he's been doing this. One town, one hunt, one debt paid down at a time, because the sword on his back used to belong to a different man-a sword he calls "Oathbreaker" now, as a joke that stopped being funny a long time ago. Redemption isn't a word men like him get to use. Penance will have to be enough.

Then a boy goes missing, something watches him back from the tree line like it's deciding whether he's worth the trouble, and the road refuses to let Garrett keep walking alone.

In a city he never meant to stay in, he finds the one thing eight years of running should have made impossible: a healer named Lyra who won't let his past decide what he deserves, a friend who calls him that and means it, a life that might almost fit. People worth staying for.

But something older than the city is stirring beneath it, and it already knows his face. The debts Garrett has spent eight years trying to outrun are about to come due-and this time, it isn't only his own life on the table.

Some things can only be paid for in steel.

The Weight of Steel is Book One of the Oathbreaker series, a grimdark fantasy about guilt, penance, and what it costs to let yourself be known. For readers who like their heroes broken first and healed slowly.