Worlds Unseen by Rachel Starr Thomson (leveled readers .txt) 📕

Quiet, timid, and still haunted by the murder of her childhood guardians, Maggie Sheffield wants peace and healing—not an opportunity to uncover truths so frightening that they threaten to forever unravel the world she thinks she knows. But when a dying friend gives her an ancient scroll that purports to contain just such truths, Maggie finds the lure of understanding too hard to resist:

For the power that killed Maggie’s guardians was not human—and she has reason to believe the same power is controlling the Seventh World.

Leaving her hopes for peace behind, Maggie sets out to carry the ancient scroll to the far eastern city of Pravik, seeking the only man in the world who can read it. Along the way, Maggie falls into the companionship of a charismatic young wanderer called Nicolas Fisher, who has secrets of his own that he has long been trying to keep hidden.

Together, their journey plunges them into a strange new world of colourful Gypsies and ancient legends, of death-hounds and beautiful witches, of wilderness treks, unexpected love, and political rebellion. But the price of truth may be too high: for Maggie, Nicolas, and the rebels of Pravik are tearing at the veil between the seen and the unseen, between good and evil, between forgotten past and treacherous future—and when that veil grows thin enough, it’s anyone’s guess what may come through.

Worlds Unseen is Book 1 of the Seventh World Trilogy.