A bride enters the manor. The house makes room for someone else.Northern Japan, 1888. Yumiko Kakizaki has one chance to save her disgraced family from ruin: marry Viscount Ren Kurooka, the scarred and secretive lord of an isolated mountain estate.The bargain is simple. Her family receives protection. Yumiko becomes mistress of Kurooka Manor.But the house has already begun preparing for her.Corridors gain impossible doors after dark. Silk garments hold the warmth of bodies that never wore them. Looms continue working when no one sits before them. And throughout the household, servants keep setting meals, paying wages, and assigning rooms to a woman no one can remember.Ren knows more than he admits. His body is bound to the manor's shifting architecture, and every attempt to contain it costs him sensation, strength, and control. Yet the rules he imposes to protect Yumiko may be as dangerous as the curse itself.As Yumiko traces missing workers through altered records, copied gestures, and silk woven with impossible instructions, she discovers an intelligence inside the manor that does not merely kill. It studies obedience. It learns labor. It wears the roles a household is trained to recognize.The stories call it Jorōgumo.And it is preparing to wear hers.To survive, Yumiko must decide whether Ren is her jailer, her ally, or another part of the trap. Ren must choose between the authority that has kept his house standing and the woman who refuses to be owned by it. Every concession between them opens more of the manor. Every secret left buried gives the thing in the silk a shape to use. Their trust may lead them into hidden rooms, but without it, neither will survive what is waiting inside.Rich with Meiji-era atmosphere, slow-burn romantic tension, and unsettling Japanese folklore, The House That Wore Her Shape is a historical Gothic horror about marriage, power, erased women, and a house built to preserve order at any human cost.Perfect for readers who love intelligent heroines, cursed aristocratic estates, rule-bound supernatural mysteries, restrained J-horror, and romance forged through choice, consequence, and dangerous proximity.

The northern door was never meant to open again.At the end of Book One, Yumiko Kakizaki left it ajar by a single finger's width. By morning, winter has entered Kurooka Manor.Snow seals the estate from the road. Rooms grow warm without fire and freeze without wind. Corridors stretch beyond the walls. Water runs in the wrong direction. Workers vanish into chambers where each task is finished, each burden is lifted, and no one is ever required to leave.Moving through it all is a Yuki-onna who does not hunt with claws or seduction. She offers something far more dangerous: rest without consequence, safety without choice, and usefulness that never ends.To protect the household, Yumiko must follow the winter's logic through damaged records, missing roads, abandoned provisions, and burdens that never reached their destination. Every clue leads back to the Boshin War; and to the husband beside her.Viscount Ren Kurooka has spent years containing the cold inside his own body. Now sensation is returning to his scarred hands, and with it come fragments of the night he called a blizzard across the mountain pass. He remembers the road closing. He remembers the people still trapped upon it. And he remembers choosing not to lift his hand.The truth fractures the alliance Yumiko and Ren fought to build. Yet the storm leaves them no refuge from each other. To survive, they must share authority without surrendering judgment, accept care without mistaking it for forgiveness, and cross a mountain route that grows more dangerous each time Ren tries to control it.Because the winter cannot be defeated by fire, steel, blood, or love.It can only be answered by restoring what was interrupted: passage, shelter, water, burden, and the right to continue.Atmospheric, intimate, and relentlessly unsettling, The Winter That Lived in His Body is a Meiji-era Gothic romance-horror about marriage, historical guilt, supernatural winter, and desire that refuses to erase accountability.For readers drawn to haunted houses, Japanese folklore, morally complicated heroes, formidable heroines, and slow-burn romance sharpened by dread and consequence alike.Book Two of The Kurooka Covenant.

Keiō 1, 1865. Seven masterless samurai arrive in an isolated mountain village expecting a human fight.The villagers claim armed collectors are coming to seize an unpaid debt. The truth is worse. For generations, the village has purchased safety and rich harvests from an immortal mountain household by surrendering one daughter from the same family as its hereditary Blood Tax.This year, the chosen family refused.Fusa Kobayashi fled with her husband and daughter, Kinu, through a forbidden passage beneath the village shrine. In escaping, they damaged the ancient covenant that kept the blood-drinking dead outside. Desperate to conceal what has happened, the village elders hire seven passing ronin to stop the men sent from the mountain.The ronin win.By sunset, they understand they have killed the wrong men.The slain retainers came to repair the shrine and restore the protections holding their dead masters back. Now the boundary is failing. The first wet footprints begin inside the village. Bodies rise with the habits of their former lives. Starved things crawl over roofs and force themselves through narrow openings. Those allowed to feed become faster, stronger, more articulate, and more human in appearance. Every wound costs them blood. Every victim gives them more.As the night deepens, each protection collapses in turn. Public ground is breached. Houses stop holding. Village blood loses its safety. The dead create new members of their household. At last, the ancient lord is permitted to enter.He has not come to destroy the village.He has come to reclaim his property.Roads close. Roofs burn. Irrigation channels flood. Water, oil, arrows, cloth, grain, farm tools, and human strength become as valuable as swords. The seven ronin are worn down by wounds that do not reset and the knowledge that the village hired them to defend a system it never intended to explain. Some fight to destroy it. Others believe restoring the sacrifice may be the only way anyone survives.At the center of the siege stands Kinu, named as the payment but denied the authority to surrender herself. Her mother alone can renew the covenant. The village that raised them now needs Fusa's hand, Kinu's body, and the mountain lord's protection more than it needs either woman's consent.Before dawn, the survivors must choose between two terrible acts: restore the Blood Tax and save the village, or destroy the covenant and face everything it has held back.But ending the bargain will not make the dead disappear.THE BLOOD TAX is a fast, graphic historical survival-horror novel about seven ronin, an inherited sacrifice, and a village forced to decide whether protection is worth becoming property. Set in late-Tokugawa Japan, it combines brutal siege action, vampire horror, Gothic inheritance, and moral conflict with the material reality of grain, water, labor, records, weapons, and wounds.For readers who want intelligent monsters, consequential violence, and compromised heroes, THE BLOOD TAX asks what people will preserve when an unjust system truly keeps them safe, whose body will pay for that safety, and what remains after the protection is broken.

A bride enters the manor. The house makes room for someone else.Northern Japan, 1888. Yumiko Kakizaki has one chance to save her disgraced family from ruin: marry Viscount Ren Kurooka, the scarred and secretive lord of an isolated mountain estate.The bargain is simple. Her family receives protection. Yumiko becomes mistress of Kurooka Manor.But the house has already begun preparing for her.Corridors gain impossible doors after dark. Silk garments hold the warmth of bodies that never wore them. Looms continue working when no one sits before them. And throughout the household, servants keep setting meals, paying wages, and assigning rooms to a woman no one can remember.Ren knows more than he admits. His body is bound to the manor's shifting architecture, and every attempt to contain it costs him sensation, strength, and control. Yet the rules he imposes to protect Yumiko may be as dangerous as the curse itself.As Yumiko traces missing workers through altered records, copied gestures, and silk woven with impossible instructions, she discovers an intelligence inside the manor that does not merely kill. It studies obedience. It learns labor. It wears the roles a household is trained to recognize.The stories call it Jorōgumo.And it is preparing to wear hers.To survive, Yumiko must decide whether Ren is her jailer, her ally, or another part of the trap. Ren must choose between the authority that has kept his house standing and the woman who refuses to be owned by it. Every concession between them opens more of the manor. Every secret left buried gives the thing in the silk a shape to use. Their trust may lead them into hidden rooms, but without it, neither will survive what is waiting inside.Rich with Meiji-era atmosphere, slow-burn romantic tension, and unsettling Japanese folklore, The House That Wore Her Shape is a historical Gothic horror about marriage, power, erased women, and a house built to preserve order at any human cost.Perfect for readers who love intelligent heroines, cursed aristocratic estates, rule-bound supernatural mysteries, restrained J-horror, and romance forged through choice, consequence, and dangerous proximity.

The northern door was never meant to open again.At the end of Book One, Yumiko Kakizaki left it ajar by a single finger's width. By morning, winter has entered Kurooka Manor.Snow seals the estate from the road. Rooms grow warm without fire and freeze without wind. Corridors stretch beyond the walls. Water runs in the wrong direction. Workers vanish into chambers where each task is finished, each burden is lifted, and no one is ever required to leave.Moving through it all is a Yuki-onna who does not hunt with claws or seduction. She offers something far more dangerous: rest without consequence, safety without choice, and usefulness that never ends.To protect the household, Yumiko must follow the winter's logic through damaged records, missing roads, abandoned provisions, and burdens that never reached their destination. Every clue leads back to the Boshin War; and to the husband beside her.Viscount Ren Kurooka has spent years containing the cold inside his own body. Now sensation is returning to his scarred hands, and with it come fragments of the night he called a blizzard across the mountain pass. He remembers the road closing. He remembers the people still trapped upon it. And he remembers choosing not to lift his hand.The truth fractures the alliance Yumiko and Ren fought to build. Yet the storm leaves them no refuge from each other. To survive, they must share authority without surrendering judgment, accept care without mistaking it for forgiveness, and cross a mountain route that grows more dangerous each time Ren tries to control it.Because the winter cannot be defeated by fire, steel, blood, or love.It can only be answered by restoring what was interrupted: passage, shelter, water, burden, and the right to continue.Atmospheric, intimate, and relentlessly unsettling, The Winter That Lived in His Body is a Meiji-era Gothic romance-horror about marriage, historical guilt, supernatural winter, and desire that refuses to erase accountability.For readers drawn to haunted houses, Japanese folklore, morally complicated heroes, formidable heroines, and slow-burn romance sharpened by dread and consequence alike.Book Two of The Kurooka Covenant.

Keiō 1, 1865. Seven masterless samurai arrive in an isolated mountain village expecting a human fight.The villagers claim armed collectors are coming to seize an unpaid debt. The truth is worse. For generations, the village has purchased safety and rich harvests from an immortal mountain household by surrendering one daughter from the same family as its hereditary Blood Tax.This year, the chosen family refused.Fusa Kobayashi fled with her husband and daughter, Kinu, through a forbidden passage beneath the village shrine. In escaping, they damaged the ancient covenant that kept the blood-drinking dead outside. Desperate to conceal what has happened, the village elders hire seven passing ronin to stop the men sent from the mountain.The ronin win.By sunset, they understand they have killed the wrong men.The slain retainers came to repair the shrine and restore the protections holding their dead masters back. Now the boundary is failing. The first wet footprints begin inside the village. Bodies rise with the habits of their former lives. Starved things crawl over roofs and force themselves through narrow openings. Those allowed to feed become faster, stronger, more articulate, and more human in appearance. Every wound costs them blood. Every victim gives them more.As the night deepens, each protection collapses in turn. Public ground is breached. Houses stop holding. Village blood loses its safety. The dead create new members of their household. At last, the ancient lord is permitted to enter.He has not come to destroy the village.He has come to reclaim his property.Roads close. Roofs burn. Irrigation channels flood. Water, oil, arrows, cloth, grain, farm tools, and human strength become as valuable as swords. The seven ronin are worn down by wounds that do not reset and the knowledge that the village hired them to defend a system it never intended to explain. Some fight to destroy it. Others believe restoring the sacrifice may be the only way anyone survives.At the center of the siege stands Kinu, named as the payment but denied the authority to surrender herself. Her mother alone can renew the covenant. The village that raised them now needs Fusa's hand, Kinu's body, and the mountain lord's protection more than it needs either woman's consent.Before dawn, the survivors must choose between two terrible acts: restore the Blood Tax and save the village, or destroy the covenant and face everything it has held back.But ending the bargain will not make the dead disappear.THE BLOOD TAX is a fast, graphic historical survival-horror novel about seven ronin, an inherited sacrifice, and a village forced to decide whether protection is worth becoming property. Set in late-Tokugawa Japan, it combines brutal siege action, vampire horror, Gothic inheritance, and moral conflict with the material reality of grain, water, labor, records, weapons, and wounds.For readers who want intelligent monsters, consequential violence, and compromised heroes, THE BLOOD TAX asks what people will preserve when an unjust system truly keeps them safe, whose body will pay for that safety, and what remains after the protection is broken.