The Key Beneath the Stone

By David McDonald Jr.

Book 1 from The Instruments of the First Night, The Key Beneath the Stone.

Kael Odran expected a relic.

He stole the Ossuary Key from a sealed royal crypt beneath Dhurroth and woke every hidden door in the buried city.

Now forgotten roads are opening beneath the stone, dead courts are stirring in the dark, and powers older than living law are reaching for the thief who should never have survived his own success. Crown agents, guilds, necromancer orders, and forgotten witnesses all want the Key, but none of them fully understand what it has awakened.

Forced into an uneasy alliance with Maerin Ostell of the Onyx Writ, Mara Qadir of Mourngate House, and Tovan Redbranch of the Glass Marches, Kael must descend into a city where every law is buried, every door remembers, and the dead do not sleep quietly.

The Instruments of the First Night are waking.

Some doors were never meant to be found.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: B0H5JHWM2G
• ISBN13: 9798180732651
• Release Date: June 2026
• Publisher: Independently Published
• Length: 422 Pages
• Weight: 1.24 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.9" x 6.0" x 9.0"