Part 1

Those who bargain with butchers never return.

Dalen lives in a land crisscrossed with interconnecting rivers, both above-ground and underground. When his sister goes missing, mere days before her intended marriage, Dalen’s family assumes that she drowned.

But the truth is far stranger than that.

Narea, the daughter of a neighboring family, claims she hears his sister’s voice emanating from a sinkhole in her room, and that she is alive. Dalen’s sister has bargained with butchers, a half-forgotten race that lives in the rivers’ depths. With the help of a magic onion, Dalen sets out to find her. But in order to do so, he must make his own bargains…