{ "item_title" : "The King Inside the Stone", "item_author" : [" Restelle "], "item_description" : "Serena has spent nineteen years as a nameless orphan in Gray-Gallows, carrying only a copper signet ring and recurring dreams of burning crowns, falling ash, and an oath carved into living rock. For weeks she has also heard a subterranean pulse beneath the borderlands. When the ring begins answering the vibration, she follows the summons into a forbidden mountain forest and reaches a monstrous citadel grown directly from the living stone.A blind hermit, Silas Crawford, warns her that the mountain has awakened because it recognizes its maker. The gate itself speaks Serena's name and opens like living flesh, then seals her inside. Within the citadel she meets Holden Mercer, a terrified surveyor whose compass has stopped pointing north and instead follows the heartbeat of the fortress. Together they discover that the castle is not a dead monument but a biological prison built around the Lithic Heart, a colossal mineral organ that has been transforming stone into living tissue.Serena's copper ring reveals that she is connected to the forgotten Lancaster dynasty. She is the reincarnated warden of an ancient pact, once known as Rose, the sorceress who bound King Rowan Lancaster and his kingdom into stone. Rowan was not merely imprisoned: his consciousness has remained embedded in the fortress, feeding on the trapped souls of courtiers, soldiers, and common people while the living citadel slowly awakens around him.As the Lithic Heart completes its transformation, Serena and Holden descend toward its central chamber. Rowan finally manifests in regal spectral form and recognizes Serena as Rose, the woman he loved and who condemned him. He offers her the temptation of an eternal kingdom, inviting her to abandon mortal life and join him so they can rebuild their world from the souls trapped inside the stone.Serena refuses. She understands that the love and identity binding them are inseparable from the suffering created by their ancient pact. Rather than become queen of another living prison, she turns against Rowan and destroys the heart sustaining the citadel. The fortress collapses, the imprisoned souls are released as silvery memory-smoke, and the centuries-old curse finally breaks.Holden survives and his compass becomes still, pointing once again toward the ordinary world. Serena leaves behind the copper signet and refuses to return to a life defined by the dead king or by the identity of Rose. She walks into the open country as Serena, free of the old pact.Yet the story does not end in complete safety. Far beyond the ruined citadel, something vastly older moves beneath the earth. A new subterranean heartbeat answers the pulse that has died, revealing that the fortress was only an outpost of a deeper, primordial force. Serena's freedom is real, but the warden's watch may not be finished.", "item_img_path" : "https://covers1.booksamillion.com/covers/bam/9/79/818/285/9798182851916_b.jpg", "price_data" : { "retail_price" : "15.99", "online_price" : "15.99", "our_price" : "15.99", "club_price" : "15.99", "savings_pct" : "0", "savings_amt" : "0.00", "club_savings_pct" : "0", "club_savings_amt" : "0.00", "discount_pct" : "10", "store_price" : "" } }

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