The choice: Serve the undead or become one of them.

Toshi never expected the strange visitor who one evening stepped foot inside his master's shop. A samurai smelling of the sea, dripping on the ground, algae strung from his armor. For the first time in his life, he discovers that monsters do roam the earth. And this one has been specifically looking for him.

Dragged from his home and all he has ever known, Toshi must now use his acquired skills in foreign maps to help the creatures who have taken him. Yet at every turn there are problems. There are even those seeking to terminate his very life, not wanting his new master to succeed in his assigned task. And when they do find it, Toshi discovers his new master's enemies have prepared for their eventual arrival, leaving him the only one capable of recovering what has been lost. Can he do what even the undead cannot? Or will he fail and be forced to wander the world as one of them?

EXCERPT

His prison's blank, glowing walls glared silently at him as he entered. His sickness washed over him. A dead certainty stole over him then, and though the unearthly cold of the ship was mercilessly flowing into him, he didn't run for his blanket when he was released. Instead, he turned around to face the departing samurai.

"Asaka-sama, please. I beg you!" He sank to his knees, his hands face down against the floor, and his eyes closed in supplication. "Release me. Take me home. I can be of no use to you. Please, I don't belong here!" His voice got caught in his throat. "Please, Lord, I beg you!"

"Worm." He pressed his forehead against the floor's glowing planks, shooting cold passing through it as it was already doing through his knees and hands. He shut his eyes tighter with a prayer, his heart quickening as he heard the sound most dreaded by his people everywhere. His acrid breath hung still in his raw throat as the soft click of a katana being slightly drawn from its sheath reverberated in the room's silence. He waited for the end.