My grandmother is gone. I watched her walk into the Dark, and those who enter that place are never seen or heard from again.
My name is Vale Rennick, and I’ve lived all of my eighteen years in a tiny community of three thousand people surrounded by the Dark.
We know little about the Dark but have experience with the requirements it sets, like how minimal space and limited resources necessitate our eldest citizen to enter the Dark upon the birth of a new baby. The fate of the departed, like the origin of the Dark, is a mystery.
My family keeps our community’s history, and Gran, our most seasoned story keeper, is the latest to walk. But on her Departure Day, she gives my father the last of her stories. Information I hope will reveal the secrets of the Dark, end the departures, and reunite me with Gran. Information he refuses to give me.
But amid smothered hopes, the impossible happens. Three strangers emerge from the Dark, desperate for my help, demanding my secrecy, and opening an entire world of possibilities. They are the key to getting answers. If only the strangers would abandon their pesky set of rules.
And their most frustrating rule of all? Not to tell me anything.
