In a world ravaged by disasters and resource wars, the Nightmare Spell has turned sleep into a death sentence. Those chosen by it are dragged into deadly trials inside the Dream Realm. Survivors become Awakened, gifted with miraculous powers. Those who fail die, and their bodies rise as monsters.Sunny, an orphan scraping by in the slums, has no family, no training, and no chance. When the Spell claims him, he does the only sensible thing: spends his last savings on a bitter cup of real coffee and walks into a police station to surrender himself as a carrier.Now, strapped to a chair as exhaustion drags him under, he's been given one piece of advice: everyone you meet in the Nightmare is an illusion. Don't hesitate to kill them.But Sunny isn't so sure that's true.Born beneath an eclipse and named for the absence of light, he's about to enter a trial that was never meant to be survivable for someone like him. And he intends to live anyway.

A century ago, the kingdom of Virelan bound its gods into a crown of black glass to end a war that was destroying the world. The gods have slept ever since, and the crown has passed quietly from monarch to monarch — until it is stolen the night the current king dies without an heir.Mira Solenne, a foundry apprentice with no noble blood, discovers she can hear the bound gods whispering through the glass — a gift that marks her as either the kingdom's salvation or its next sacrifice. As three claimants scramble for the throne and the crown moves through the black market of a fracturing capital, Mira is pulled into a race to recover it before whoever holds it learns how to wake what's inside.