Roots of the Condemned: Where Holy Cruelty Ends, a Terrifying Treason Begins.

The ecclesiastical machine demands a very specific kind of quiet. But the earth remembers what the church tries to bury.

For decades, Abbess Ursula Umbra has maintained the Bone Orchard with ruthless, cold precision. By using the calcified remains of condemned nobles to fertilize grafted fruit trees, she extracts powerful resurrection seeds that fuel a dying dominion. She has built an intellectual fortress around her own deeply repressed guilt, justifying the horrific harvest as a necessary, divine duty. But her severe, meticulously ordered world is shattered the morning the soil tears open—and a living, breathing young man claws his way out of a grave.

Arthur Addison is an impossible miracle, a resurrected boy born from the suffering of an ancient, sleeping beastline chained beneath the estate. His existence is a heresy that threatens to collapse the entire holy order of the choir-princes. Desperate to maintain control, Ursula intends to classify and conceal the terrifying anomaly.

But she did not anticipate the fierce defiance of Aelwen Amaranth, the estate's battle-hardened lay protector. Aelwen refuses to let a terrified boy become a casualty of the church's bloody ledgers. Her unconditional compassion strikes directly at Ursula's heavily armored heart, igniting a dangerous, undeniable romance that forces the Abbess to question everything she has ever believed.

Roots of the Condemned is the breathtaking third volume of The Cathedral Bestiary by John Newbill. It is a decadent dark fantasy woven with gothic horror, Sapphic romance, and an epic struggle against a corrupt theocracy. In a world powered by sanctified cruelty, choosing mercy is the ultimate act of treason. Will Ursula burn her doctrine to save the woman she is falling for—or will the relentless ecclesiastical machine devour them all?