The Map of Unmaking

As a Cartographic Conservator for the Royal Archives, Elara specializes in deleting "phantom settlements"—fake towns created by mapmakers to catch copyright thieves. Cold, methodical, and carrying a rare condition where her blood turns to black ink if she yields to emotion, Elara believes her mission is simple. Until she steps inside the map.

In Echoridge, time is measured in vellum and the walls are made of shadows. There she meets Kaelen Rooke, the Lord of the Phantom, a man sketched into existence a century ago who cannot leave the map's borders without fading into nothing. Kaelen is a living anatomical votive; every time he feels love or pain, a piece of his body slowly transforms into solid gold wax.

Kaelen is not just the town's guardian; he is the prisoner of an ancestral debt involving Elara's own bloodline. She wasn't sent there by mistake; she was "mortgaged" to him twenty years ago in a clandestine legal trade. Now, as the sentient "white space" begins to eat the map's edges, Elara must decide: will she fulfill her duty to delete the town and the man she loves, or will she draw herself permanently into the map to save him?

A dark and atmospheric Romantasy where the lines between reality and ink blur, and love is the only coordinate that matters.

Echoridge does not exist. It is drawn in the margins of reality, and Elara Myle has been sent to erase it forever.

As a Cartographic Conservator for the Royal Archives, Elara specializes in deleting "phantom settlements"—fake towns created by mapmakers to catch copyright thieves. Cold, methodical, and carrying a rare condition where her blood turns to black ink if she yields to emotion, Elara believes her mission is simple. Until she steps inside the map.

In Echoridge, time is measured in vellum and the walls are made of shadows. There she meets Kaelen Rooke, the Lord of the Phantom, a man sketched into existence a century ago who cannot leave the map's borders without fading into nothing. Kaelen is a living anatomical votive; every time he feels love or pain, a piece of his body slowly transforms into solid gold wax.

Kaelen is not just the town's guardian; he is the prisoner of an ancestral debt involving Elara's own bloodline. She wasn't sent there by mistake; she was "mortgaged" to him twenty years ago in a clandestine legal trade. Now, as the sentient "white space" begins to eat the map's edges, Elara must decide: will she fulfill her duty to delete the town and the man she loves, or will she draw herself permanently into the map to save him?

A dark and atmospheric Romantasy where the lines between reality and ink blur, and love is the only coordinate that matters.