When the Brier Howls

The jungle of Feng-Lian does not merely grow; it hunts. At the edge of the wetlands, a foreign briar with thorns of red flint has taken root. It creeps into shelters at twilight. It pierces the throats of the sleeping, hollowing out their ribcages to turn their chests into instruments that shriek with the voices of dead kin. Shi Hanying survived the slaughter of his hunting band only to hear his cousin's voice calling from a thicket of thorn-veins. Meng Chunhua’s nets drag up vines wrapped around drowned scouts; Gou Dongxian’s sacred hearth cannot burn the wet wood fast enough; and Tan Ruizhe knows every beast in the forest is fleeing. To survive the bloom, four mortal enemies must carry fire into the howling green.