Some men fear the dark. Asher Alder sells the light that keeps it at bay.

Asher is a master alchemist, peddling luminous oils to frightened villagers living on the edge of the uncanny woods. But his unparalleled bravery on the monster-haunted roads is not born of courage-it is born of an absolute, chilling emptiness. Asher feels no terror, no grief, and no love. He is a perfectly calibrated machine, traveling the continent to harvest the world's most terrifying beasts for profit.

In Tears in the Void, the breathtaking second volume of The Covenant of Quiet Beasts, a whispered rumor sends Asher deep into an abandoned, fog-choked valley in search of a legendary creature. It is a towering entity of pure, suffocating shadow-a beast that extinguishes flames simply by drawing near and devours the ambient moonlight.

Armed with volatile chemical explosives and heavy iron traps, Asher expects to face a ruthless apex predator. Instead, what he finds in the ruined cobblestone square will shatter his mechanical understanding of the world. The shadow-beast is not hunting; it is mourning. And as the creature's agonizing, earth-shattering grief washes over the dead valley, Asher is forced to confront the terrifying void within his own chest.

How do you kill a monster that possesses more of a heart than you do?

Immerse yourself in John Newbill's dark, atmospheric world-a gothic fantasy masterpiece that blurs the line between man, beast, and the lingering echoes of love.