Ashes Beneath the Hollow Mountain

For generations, the isolated village beneath Hollow Mountain has faithfully upheld an ancient tradition. At the beginning of each year, one soul is dressed in white, led to the mountain's summit, and cast into the endless chasm below.

This year, twenty-four-year-old Aveline Harrow is chosen.

Expecting death, Aveline instead awakens deep within a vast underground world hidden beneath the mountain. There, she encounters a creature that should exist only in nightmares—a towering beast-like man with powerful horns, predatory features, and an unsettling beauty that is matched only by the fury burning behind his eyes. Though he has every reason to kill her, he spares her life, imprisoning her within the mountain he calls home.

Terrified and convinced she has lost her mind, Aveline refuses to trust her captor. She attempts escape after escape, only to be found and returned to the chamber he has prepared for her. Yet as the days pass, the mountain reveals wonders and secrets unlike anything she has ever imagined, forcing her to question everything she believed about the world beyond its stone walls.

When an ancient power awakens within her, Aveline discovers that magic has been sleeping beneath Hollow Mountain all along. As her abilities continue to grow, she and the mysterious beast are drawn into a forgotten history buried beneath thousands of years of silence—a history that predates her village, the sacrifices, and even the legends themselves.

Bound together by truths neither of them expected to uncover, fear slowly gives way to understanding, and understanding blossoms into an impossible love. But the deeper they venture into the mountain's past, the more they realize that the annual sacrifices are only a small part of a far greater mystery. Something ancient shattered this land long ago, leaving it isolated from the rest of the world, and the truth has remained buried ever since.

Now, with an old darkness stirring once more, Aveline must decide whether to return to the life that condemned her... or fight beside the man the world was never meant to know, risking everything to restore a forgotten land before it is lost forever.