You found the unmarked door. Good. This room isn't listed in any menu and won't turn up in a search — the only way in is the link you were handed.
Below is the Collective's library of free novellas: prequels, origin stories, and the quiet hours that happen between the books. Read them here, in their entirety, whenever you like. Nothing is gated. Consider it a thank-you for staying when you could have left.
The Tolling Year
In 1348 the pestilence comes ashore at Melcombe in a single body — and Death, who has worn ten thousand others and sat with all the dying since the first plague, meets the one enemy she cannot outlast: a courteous man who walked down the gangplank wearing flesh. The complete prequel to The Hollow Crown, free, right here — the doorway into The Sweating Year, out July 1.
Read the Full Novella → The Darkling DispatchEvery free novella across the Collective — read each one in full.
Every pen name keeps its own dispatch. Free stories go to the lists first — every novella in this room came through one of these doors.