The Burnt Garden

A living root pulses in the deepest shaft of a dead world—and it bonds itself to a lame miner who never asked to carry the last hope of a continent. Edric Hammil can feel an ancient forest stirring beneath ash and dust, desperate to breathe again. But the mage-dynasty that burned it all two centuries ago will kill anyone who threatens the scarcity that keeps them in power. With soldiers on his trail and a vine growing into his flesh, Edric must cross a petrified wasteland to reach the forest's mythical Heart—knowing the price of revival may be his own body.