The Fortress of Crows

Japan, winter of 1571. In the Chichibu mountains, a small samurai garrison watches over a fortress the world has forgotten. Snow will soon cut them off from the valley. The first night, a crow settles on the futon of a young samurai. By morning he is dead. The door locked from within. A single crow, perfectly still, watches over the body. Then another. Then another. A terrible rule emerges: the thing that stalks the fortress takes only those who find themselves alone at night behind a closed door.
It cannot open a door. It passes through. A shut door becomes a death sentence. Each night, the survivors - a haunted captain, a widow who remembers, a boy who sees too much, an old monk searching his ancient texts - must choose. And behind the horror lies a second truth: the fortress was never a garrison, but a prison where daimyos long ago sent those they wanted to erase, to feed what lives in the mountain.
A historical horror novel whose fear will follow the reader into their bedroom.