The Lexicon of Lost Things
Not all inheritances are gifts. Some are sentences.
Elara “Ellie” Vance is a professional ghost, quiet, meticulous, and slowly fading into the background of her own life, working in the dusty silence of the city archives. Her only legacy from a reclusive great-aunt is a heavy, unsettling book called The Lexicon of Lost Things.
The moment Ellie touches it, her world cracks open.
The Lexicon is alive. It shows her the invisible truths of her rainy, neon-drenched city: the hidden true names floating above every person’s head, and the secret debts they owe to unseen forces. Guided by the book’s hauntingly elegant spirit, Silas, Ellie is thrust into the role of an arbiter in this clandestine world, settling disputes between river gods and real estate moguls, and recording the contracts of beings that should not exist.
But the power comes with a chilling price. The deeper Ellie bonds with the Lexicon, the more her own memories and sense of self begin to bleed away, replaced by echoes of its past keepers. Silas, her only guide, offers a ritual to stabilize the bond to make her the true Keeper.
Yet, clues from her aunt’s past whisper a terrifying truth: Silas is not the guardian. He is the prisoner. The Lexicon is his gilded cage, and the “ritual” is a centuries-old trap, a soul-swap that would free him into Ellie’s body and life, while trapping her consciousness within the book’s pages forever.
Now, Ellie must navigate a labyrinth of magical politics, hunted by a ruthless society that wants to weaponize the Lexicon, and tempted by the very power that is erasing her. To survive, she must learn to wield the book’s magic against its own master, decipher her aunt’s cryptic warnings, and decide what she is willing to lose her ordinary life, her memories, or her very soul, before the final page turns, and the Lexicon claims its next Keeper.
A novel of hidden cities, haunting debts, and the terrifying price of seeing what was meant to stay lost.