When the Realms break, they don’t shatter clean, they twist.

Maxen never asked to carry a crystal that hums in his chest like a second heartbeat. He never asked for Wisker, a creature stitched from glitch and shadow, to choose him. And he never asked to be hunted through Coil-controlled cities where fractures in the world spill light that feels too much like memory.

He and his cousin Ren only want survival. But survival is never simple. Not when Rift cults tear open wounds in the earth, not when the Coil whisper of weapons that could rewrite the world, and not when the crystals themselves begin to stir.

Something older is moving beneath it all. Dreaming, watching, waiting. And Maxen may be closer to its thread than he dares admit.

The Fractured Path is the first book in Shadows and Strangers — a dark, lyrical YA fantasy series of survival, grief, and wonder, where every step carries you closer to the place where reality itself begins to unravel.