Madam Lether

Magic always comes at a cost - sometimes it's memory, sometimes it's blood. In A Thin Line of Ash, tales flicker between forgotten towers, salt-mined sorrows, firelit markets, and quiet deathbeds. A scholar is preserved through heart-sacrifice. A traveller finds three witches and asks the wrong questions. A poem-like whisper of seven choices alters an old woman's final days. From the lyrical to the grotesque, these stories explore the spaces where magic touches the human soul - and how little of ourselves we're willing to burn away to feel its warmth.
For fans of Kelly Link, Ursula K. Le Guin, and those who believe even monsters may have once been magicians.