The legend of The Debt of Souls begins in the choking heat of Caldera Island, where the Dominion Mercantile Company buys lives with ink, shackles, and whispered promises. Edward Thatch — once feared as Blackbeard — is dragged from his cell and bound by a ritual older than the volcano that smolders above the town. His soul is tied to a coral effigy, every breath chained to the Company’s will, every heartbeat a step toward damnation.

To shave years off a two-century sentence, he is forced into blood-soaked contracts, hunting the wicked through brothels, butcher halls, and jungle ruins where the dead still whisper. Each head he takes frees a trapped wisp of soul, but the curse hungers more deeply with every kill, gnawing at the man he once was. Scarlet — thief, traitor, old companion — warns him that the Company’s ink stains every map and every life it touches.

Yet the deeper he walks into the island’s corridors of rot, the clearer the truth becomes: the DMC’s power is fed by something ancient beneath the volcanic stone, a horror older than commerce or kings. To break the bond, Thatch must confront not only the monsters the Company hides, but the one it has carved into his spirit.

In a world where freedom is bought with blood and memory, he must decide whether to reclaim his soul… or burn the empire that sought to own it.