Description

Valdmere has never had much sympathy for Aldric Vane. A sellsword down to his last nine coppers, he lives beneath a leaking roof with Mira, a partner whose concern tends to come wrapped in insults. When a mercenary contract promises easy silver for a single night’s work, they accept: enter a goblin-held mine and recover stolen cargo. It sounds straightforward. Instead, Aldric emerges broken and bleeding, desperate for someone who can keep him alive. The only healer willing to treat him at that hour works in Valdmere’s darkest district. She tends his wound, hands him a vial, and smiles as though she knows exactly what comes next. Aldric drinks it and falls asleep. By morning, his skin feels softer. By the third day, his waist has narrowed. By the seventh, his reflection has become something he cannot yet put a name to. But the alchemist responsible has disappeared, her stall is gone, and no one can remember her face. In The Long Hunt, Aldric has thirty days before the transformation becomes permanent. Answers lie somewhere in Valdmere or beyond its borders, while each sleepless morning brings another change and another conversation with Mira that neither knows how to finish. Finding an antidote is only part of the uncertainty. As the days pass and the familiar face in the mirror slips further away, Aldric must confront a harder question: if he finds a way back, will he still want to take it?