The Witch-Bane (Paperback)

The killings are precise. Ritualistic. And they mean something.

When a series of meticulously executed murders begins drawing attention across the city, Alexander and Yiyao find themselves pulled into a case that refuses to behave like a normal investigation. The killer is methodical, prepared, and operating according to a design that predates anything in the modern record.

A design with roots in the oldest darkness in the world.

As Alexander's psychic gifts strain against the weight of what he's seeing, and Yiyao confronts echoes of a past she thought buried, the investigation forces them both toward a question neither wants to answer: how much of yourself can you sacrifice to understand a mind like this — and still come back?

The Witch-Bane is the second book in the Death Keeper Chronicles, a darkly theological urban fantasy series where the monsters are real, the stakes are eternal, and redemption is never cheap.

Daniel R. Hersch is the author of The Death Keeper Chronicles: A Light in the Darkness and The Witch-Bane, dark mythic fantasy novels that explore mortality, faith, rebellion, and the fragile boundary between love and ruin. His fiction blends ancient mythological tones with theological and philosophical questions, crafting worlds where cosmic forces observe humanity and ordinary lives collide with divine consequence.Hersch's work is driven by atmosphere and moral tension. His stories follow exiles, lovers, killers, and witnesses who stand at the edge of eternity, forced to confront suffering, power, and the silence of the gods. Through these characters, he examines what happens when grief is ignored, when justice fails, and when individuals choose to defy the forces that shape their fate.At the center of his writing is a fascination with death, not only as an ending, but as a narrator, a witness, and a constant presence woven through every human life. His ongoing saga, The Death Keeper Chronicles, is told through a mythic lens where life, love, and destruction are inseparable, and where even the gods are not beyond question.Hersch continues to expand this universe, building a long-form mythological narrative that asks what it means to live under the gaze of eternity.He can be reached on Instagram at @thedeathkeeperchronicles, where he welcomes reader feedback, questions, and conversation.