One Against the Dimming

Khalid has survived alone in a ghost-riddled world for as long as he can remember. He knows how to lay a limestone circle, when to run, and how to stay alive when most people don't. What he doesn't know is how to fight the things that salt bombs can't stop — the bigger, darker ghosts that are showing up more and more.

When a mysterious recruiter named Fenn leaves a letter on his fire escape, Khalid follows the coordinates east to the Bastion: a fortress school where hunters are trained, secrets are locked away, and nothing is quite what it seems.

At the Bastion, Khalid discovers he has a rare ability called Anima Vision — the power to see ghost energy with his own eyes. It's useful. It's painful. And it might be the key to something much bigger than ghost hunting.

Because the Hollow King is real. A Tier Four ghost — unkillable by any known weapon — who soul-takes the living and holds their souls prisoner. And Khalid has reason to believe his missing parents might be among them.

Together with his new friends Caden, a bookworm with a talent for finding things that aren't supposed to be found, and Cyrus, the best fighter in the school who carries his own painful past, Khalid begins to uncover what the Bastion's teachers haven't been telling them.

The answers are in the locked section of the library. And the answers lead somewhere much more dangerous.

One Against the Dimming is the first book in the Soulless Saga — a middle-grade fantasy adventure about loss, loyalty, and learning to fight what you can't yet see.