She thought a long weekend at her childhood home would be nostalgia and rice paddies. Instead, a wrinkled talisman reads: "Ten days of mourning — the filial daughter must give her heart." Two girls. One faded family shrine. A secret pact with something called the River God that has fed on the family for generations. Nina Zeng is twenty, born sick, raised on city ambition — until a festival, a shaman's trick, and a pile of bird hearts shatter normalcy. Allison Rocha, her closest friend (and the only one who knows how Nina really laughs), refuses to leave. Together they pry open attic drawers, decode old notes, and force a village's buried rituals into daylight. Every clue pulls them closer: sacrificial charms, a snake-branded memorial tablet, a shaman's ledger, and a pattern of "borrowed life" that was never what it claimed. This is a race: five days of warning, five days of slaughter, and a choice between fighting a god who eats hearts or becoming the hostage it wants. Smart, scary, and intimate — Ten Days of Mourning asks: what would you give to live, and whom would you be willing to lose to keep the person you love alive?
22 Chapters
