Marcelle is at war with the forest.
Anyone can see it: herbicide tanks beside the tire plant, a valley poisoned dead around the town, and trees that keep pushing back no matter how much they spray.
Before it was Marcelle, this land was Kildare, home to the Guardians who tended an ancient power called the Duir. A pastor and his followers burned them as witches and took their land. The land answered with a curse. Anyone who bleeds on that ground belongs to it. They can’t die, can’t truly heal, and can never leave.
Generations later, the people who run Marcelle have turned the curse into a business. They trap newcomers and use them up, piece by piece. Beyond the cliffs, the Kildarians, cursed through no fault of their own, have learned to live in symbiosis with the Duir.
The Duir is the only thing keeping Marcelle’s cursed inside the valley. If it dies, they walk free: nearly impossible to kill, many of them broken in the mind, and some of them killers who have had generations to practice.
So the Duir is choosing allies. Two special ops soldiers pulled from a wrecked truck. A cop who won’t stop looking for his friend. A Maine Coon named Jigsaw, lost years ago and now far bigger than he should be. And Kate, the cat’s long-lost owner and the only person ever to escape the curse, who is now caught in it again.
The town was built on a massacre. The land never forgot.