The Canary

Earth sent twenty elite soldiers to conquer the Dark Continent. Only the slave in the cage survived the fall. Inside the Vanguard-9, Callum was a nobody. A "Sensitive" freak from London with a nervous system that screamed at the touch of magic. To the PMC, he was a Canary—a disposable sensor used to ground their high-tech armor against the static of a dying world. Then, three miles away, a man on a balcony waved a finger. In a heartbeat, Earth’s $100-million masterpiece was sliced in half. No explosion. No warning. Just a violet seam and the sound of God-tech failing. Callum woke up in the black mud of the Under-City, branded, collared with an explosive bone-shard, and sold to a scavenger guild that treats human life as a rounding error. He has no magic. He has no weapons. He has a bomb on his neck and a week to live. Until he finds a rusted hilt in the dirt. There’s a voice in his head now. It isn't human. It doesn't want to save him. It wants to use him to dismantle the monsters who think they own the sky. Callum was sent to die in the dark. But the ghost in his marrow has other plans.