The Bell That Binds

Her village burned for a lord's lie. All she carried out of the fire was her mother's bronze bell — and the mountains have been listening ever since. One ring made a winged nightmare kneel. One ring bought a fox spirit's debt. Now a hooded warlord marches with a second bell, twin to her own, and every beast in the range can feel them calling to each other. But the bells were never weapons. They were a seal — her mother's seal — on something older than any army sleeping inside the black mountain. When the mountain finally answers, it will not answer to him. A girl. A bell. And a war that will be decided by who the mountains obey.