What if your greatest creation was never meant to hang on a wall, but to open a door?
Six months after losing Eleanor, the woman who raised her, Tess Urban is drowning in grief and art supplies. When she's forced to clear out Eleanor's old studio, her world threatens to collapse entirely. Until something in the painting she can't bear to part with awakens.
At night, as London sleeps, a presence emerges from the shadows. Not quite human, not quite beast, it watches Tess with ancient eyes and whispers praise as her paintbrush dances across the canvas. Its touch ignites more than just her creativity, drawing her toward a stone arch that shouldn't exist and a realm that calls to something dormant within her.
"Look behind the surface," Eleanor had insisted in her final days. Now, as Tess discovers what truly lurks within the painting, within herself, she must decide whether to brave the step through the veil between worlds. Whether she can embrace both her art and the watchful guardian who calls to her from beyond.
Behind the Surface is a haunting tale of grief, desire, and awakening power that blurs the line between the artist and the art, the shadow and the self.
