THE BORROWED DEAD

An urban fantasy series by K. V. Maes. This site requires JavaScript for the interactive timeline, map, and view toggle. Please enable JavaScript to experience the full site.

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

Two ways to read this world:

The Universe The Books Timeline The Map The Orders Voices Author

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K. V. Maes · Dark Fantasy

THE KEEPING
The LivingThe Kept

It runs across three series in one world. The Borrowed Dead is Book One, where it begins.

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.

A drowned valley, four hundred years gone, and a future that has forgotten 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.

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The Keeping · a book a month

A new book on the 1st of every month, from July 2026 through to June 2027. Twelve of them in all.

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.

October 2026

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.

From November 2026

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.

From April 2027

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

The Books

The Borrowed Dead, the Trilogy

One family, three times, and a single library.

A complete story told over three books, and the first way 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

The Borrowed Dead opens the series on 1 July 2026, then a new book every month.

Subscribers get the opening chapters and a reader's guide to the marks, free.

Get the opening chapters

Four Centuries

1623 → 2456

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

Scroll to explore the timeline

The Map

The Living World

Through the Glass

The cities where the dead are kept, and where they are taken. Pick a place to look.

The drowned valley, the school above the lake, and the far Library. Choose a time and place.

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. Choose an entry from the index to read it.

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.

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).

How It Began

I dreamed this universe before I wrote it. I was Bram, the whole of my chest tattooed; I dreamed the story itself, and the detective going down into the underworld and coming back. The weird dreams come true now, in the books.

Besides, my wife once told me a horse was coming out of my chest at night. Perhaps I missed the pinch of salt to bind it directly. Or perhaps, it seems, I skipped the Aumbry, and I should have listened more to the teachers.

Enjoy the universe. It will grow further.