Return of the Overthrown

At the beginning of the story, the young baron Coris von Yseer and his men are punished for a murder by being sent into the Wildlands. This is tantamount to a death sentence: surviving in the forests teeming with undead is practically impossible. But Coris—whose soul, as it turns out, contains the power granted through magic by three different people—inspires his subordinates to a feat. By building an impregnable fortress among bare rocks, they repel monster attacks and other enemies. Meanwhile, the baron himself, at the cost of heroic effort, destroys the tomb of Taris the Necromancer, the chief culprit behind all the ominous events, including attacks by shurds and the undead on forest settlements. Yet the price Coris paid is high: from now on he is an icy monster, with deadly tentacles growing from his neck. Heat and being near a church inflict infernal pain on him. Even so, the hero’s consciousness remains the same, and he continues to fight evil in his own altered form. In this book, Coris must set out on a campaign to learn the origins of the curse that has befallen him—and to confirm that the best defense against the shurds is an attack.