Marcus Kane has kept one secret his whole life: he can hear the dead. When the dead begin to rise across the battlefield, he discovers his gift is nothing like the enemy's. The enemy hooks souls into obedience. Marcus does not enslave. He asks, and the dead are free to refuse. In a hundred years, the thing under the ice has never once been refused.

As the apocalypse spreads and the living run out of ground, Marcus becomes the leader of survivors and willing dead alike, set against a method that takes the fallen by force and a deeper thing waking beneath the cold. A war story about consent, command, and what it costs to lead an army that chose you.