Japan, winter of 1571. In the Chichibu mountains, a small samurai garrison watches over a fortress the world has forgotten. Snow will soon cut them off from the valley.
The first night, a crow settles on the futon of a young samurai. By morning he is dead. The door locked from within. A single crow, perfectly still, watches over the body. Then another. Then another.
A terrible rule emerges: the thing that stalks the fortress takes only those who find themselves alone at night behind a closed door. It cannot open a door. It passes through.
A shut door becomes a death sentence. Each night, the survivors ? a haunted captain, a widow who remembers, a boy who sees too much, an old monk searching his ancient texts ? must choose. And behind the horror lies a second truth: the fortress was never a garrison, but a prison where daimyos long ago sent those they wanted to erase, to feed what lives in the mountain.
A historical horror novel whose fear will follow the reader into their bedroom.
