The Black Lantern Company

The roads are going bad. Across the soot-stained borderlands, old rail tunnels breathe smoke with no engine inside, dead telegraph lines chatter in the rain, and black mile markers appear where no road should run. Villages vanish between stations. Bridges ring with bells buried under the earth. Mines, wells, and forgotten highways split open into Hell. You bear the Roadmark, a living ward-scar that lets you sense broken Hellroads and wake the old seals built to hold them shut. That makes you useful. It also makes you hunted. With you travels the Black Lantern Company: Bram Briarjack, a towering rabbit-man guardian built like a wall; William Vellon, Hell’s Big Bad Wolf and a ruthless outlaw with a stolen relic blade; Garrik Mossjaw, a stocky lizard-blooded ruin-crawler who reads traps like scripture; Veyn Quickcoil, a serpent-blooded spellshot with a runed revolver and a venom-sharp mouth; and Zareth Undertow, a kraken-man cursebreaker who turns wounds and hexes into strength. Together, you ride the iron roads, muddy lanes, haunted bridges, and dying rail towns before the Brimstone Riders force open the First Road, the oldest highway between Hell and the mortal world.