Life has been all but kind to Jean Kirstein. Running from ghosts has winded him up in Trost, searching for odd jobs and living off that prospect of something greater. Fortune has not found him, only the bottom of a bottle has.

His grueling desperation has left him standing on the porch of the witch’s hut buried deep in the woods beyond the stretch of civilization. Night reigns in all its terror, singing its song with a chorus of crickets and cicadas. He knocks twice, pauses, then knocks again.