The Lady in Flesh

<p>When the earth still sang a girl climbed a mountain to fast and listen. What answered did not speak in words it opened a door.</p><p></p><p>In <strong>1603 Appalachia</strong> Wenonah is chosen to keep the old ways: silence hunger and a vision on a sacred height. But at the forest's edge a new settlement <strong>New Prosperity </strong>has been hammered into the bones of ancient trees. The settlers call it providence. The land calls it desecration. As winter bears down and fear spreads Wenonah's vision twists into a bargain that births a legend one of flesh worship and a hunger that remembers every name it is given.</p><p></p><p>Centuries later that wound refuses to close. Beneath the foundations of a hilltop college a <strong>room that shouldn't exist</strong> begins to breathe. Whispers move through vents. Walls sweat like skin. The old song rises again and those who listen find themselves marked by grief by faith by desire and by the terrible comfort of something that promises to love you if you'll only let it eat.</p><p></p><p><em>The Lady in Flesh</em> is <strong>Book One of Psalms of the Tear</strong> a standalone-entry horror novel that marries Appalachian folk dread with theological obsession and body horror. It is a story about the cost of making a world in your image and the older world that asks for its due. For readers of dark atmospheric horror who like their myths with teeth their history with blood and their hauntings with a heartbeat.</p><p></p><p><strong>Themes & notes:</strong> Appalachian folk/cosmic horror • occult ritual • psychological descent • colonial trespass and its consequences • missing persons • liminal rooms and thin places • faith corrupted into appetite.</p>