Burning Breath

A stolen church relic. A dying thief who should already be dead. A buried chamber beneath the city that was never meant to open again.

Kael accepts the bounty because it looks like Church work wrapped in discretion: recover a stolen sacred vessel before the watch, the magistrates, and the wrong witnesses turn a private scandal into public panic.

But the thief carrying the vessel is no ordinary criminal.

He sweats incense.
He coughs blood flecked with white grit.
He hears singing in old stone.
And even after bullets tear through him, he keeps moving.

With Maris at his side, Kael follows the trail through dye markets, watch cells, civic squares, sealed hospice yards, and the hidden remains of a city built over its own sacred wounds. Every place the thief touches reveals the same pattern: old Church stone, buried relics, forbidden magic, and something below the city beginning to answer.

The Church wants the vessel recovered quietly.

Kael knows quiet usually means the truth has already been buried.

Beneath Saint Vale's Close, they find more than stolen property. They find a lock-hall hidden under the city, relics sealed into the walls, and a force old enough to stir Kael's Hali Sickness from the bone.

Burning Breath is Book 2 of The Hali Files, an adult dark fantasy horror novella series of demon hunters, occult mystery, divine corruption, forbidden magic, body horror, Church denial, and a world slowly waking to what was sealed beneath it.