The Universe The Books Timeline The Map The Orders Voices Author
Newsletter

The Borrowed Dead · Book One — a story of the Keeping

THE BORROWED DEAD
The Living

He keeps the dead. The others only know how to take.

Bram clears out the flats of the dead. Then he wakes wearing a stranger's family tattooed across his skin, and the marks are a working key to other times.

Through the Glass — The Times He Sees

THE BORROWED DEAD
The Kept

A drowned valley four hundred years gone. A future that forgot its dead.

Speak the marks and a ring of pale circles opens on the wall. Through any pair of glasses he charges, the time each one holds.

Get Notified Enter the World

The Keeping

One World. Three Series.

Different cities, different magic, one cosmology. Start anywhere.

The Trilogy · 3 Books

The Borrowed Dead

Antwerp. A man who empties the flats of the dead wakes wearing a stranger's family on his skin. Literary grief, with teeth.

Explore below
The Bridge · Book Four

The Founding of the Aumbry

How the school was born. The founder carries his last dead and hands the craft on.

Coming Soon
The School Saga · 5 Books

The Aumbry Years

A school for keeping the dead without taking them. Dark academia: five connection-years, one unguarded heir.

Coming Soon
Naples · A Trilogy

The Nightcrosser

A homicide detective whose magic is silent: he crosses into the land of the dead to bring back the wrongly taken. Occult-detective noir.

Coming Soon

One author, K. V. Maes. One world, the Keeping.

The Books

The Borrowed Dead — the Trilogy

One Family. Three Times. One Library.

A complete, three-book story — the first door into the Keeping.

The drowned valley, the living city, and the far archive that can keep the dead for good.

For readers of

The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue· Ninth House· A Darker Shade of Magic· The Ten Thousand Doors of January· The Atlas Six
“I keep them,” he said. He put two fingers flat on his own chest. “Somebody has to. Or they go all the way out.”
— from The Borrowed Dead, chapter one
We were not finished.
— the last words inked on his skin, beside the smallest name

Coming Soon

Four Centuries

1623 → 2456

The drowning, the keeping, and the far Library that holds the names.

Scroll to explore the timeline

The Map

Antwerp, the Living City

The Times Through the Glass

The Vestibule at the city's edge. The river. The bar. The flats of the dead.

A Flemish valley going under, four hundred years gone. A future that forgot how to keep its dead.

The Keeper · Bram
The Vestibule · the neutral order
The Takers · those who eat the dead
The drowned valley · 1623
The Library · 2456

The Codex

The Craft of Keeping

The Other Times

The orders, the marks, and how the dead are actually kept. Tap any card to go deep.

What the glass shows: the drowned valley, the second death, and the far Library.

The orders load here.

Voices

Two Voices, the Living

The Kept Speak

Bram, who clears the dead for a living. Noor, who can see through the glass while she is near him.

The dead carried on his skin, and the dying man who laid them there. Their lines are set in italic, the way the book keeps them.

Voices load here.

The Author

K. V. Maes

Commercial fantasy, grief with teeth.

K. V. Maes writes dark, commercial fantasy set in rain-grey cities at the edge of the uncanny. One world, the Keeping, told across three series: The Borrowed Dead (the trilogy), The Aumbry Years (the dark-academia school saga), and The Nightcrosser (the Naples occult-detective trilogy).

Why This Story

“I wanted a book about the thing we actually do with the dead, which is decide, one flat and one name at a time, whether to keep them or let them go all the way out. Everything else — the marks, the glass, the other times — grew out of that one question.”

Join the List

Read the Opening.

Be There at the First Jump.

The opening chapters of The Borrowed Dead and a reader's guide to the three rules of the marks, free to subscribers.

The first look through the glass, and word the day the series launches.