Birth from Silence

Lioren Thassel, an orphan in the ruined city of Ravengro, where mist forever clung between the rooftops and the churches rang like echoes from another world. The townsfolk said he was “born silent” — no cry, no breath, only open eyes that seemed to already know what death was.
 
In truth, Lioren had already known death.
He was a Duskwalker, a soul that had left the grave carrying a task.
 
When he was nine, he was taken in by the Brothers of the Silent Threshold, a Pharasmin order that kept a cloister deep within the forests by Lake Lias — guardians of the passage between life and death, and wardens against those who would crawl back across it.