The Hill of the Hanged. The Tuonetar Cycle, #1

In the blighted moorlands of Storsen, the dead do not rest. Worm has no name, no past, no will of his own. He digs graves, guards gallows, and feeds on what the Necromancers of Dark Valley leave him - scraps of rotten meat soaked in Tuonetar's Blood, the drug that keeps the Living Dead obedient, broken, and craving more. He does not remember being human. But something is returning. Set against the backdrop of a dying north - plague-scarred villages, a city of ghosts, and a religious cult that turns the living into weapons - The Hill of the Hanged follows four stories unfolding across the same darkening world.
A boy stolen from his family and made into a monster, slowly clawing his way back to himself. The half-elven Dragon Riders who patrol the skies above a conquered city, navigating the treacherous politics of a court built on a knife's edge. A quiet librarian in a southern guild, pulling at a thread that leads somewhere very dark. And moving through it all, a bard with blood on his hands and a sack of ears at his saddle - a hunter of the dead who carries the grief of the north one village at a time.
Four stories. One world unravelling. Part One of The Tuonetar Cycle.