The Twelfth Cycle Saga, Part II: Beast of Burden

For eight centuries, the Empire of Giantridge has demanded only one thing from the conquered: silence. The terie, once proud plains-runners, have been reduced to beasts of burden. Their culture is outlawed, their history erased, and their lives ground into ash beneath the iron tread of the Empire's flawless mechanical enforcers, the GOLEMs. Bodaway is a slave who knows the rules of survival: bear the heavy harness, endure the herder's lash, and never remember what was lost. But when a desperate act of violence forces her to flee into the wasteland, she uncovers a buried truth the Empire has killed to keep hidden. She realizes to survive, her people must reclaim the ancient heritage they were forced to forget. In the capital, the imperial leadership views mercy as a disease. Obsessed with forging a brutal, eternal legacy, the royal bloodline rules through industrialized terror, demanding absolute obedience from their legions, their machines, and their own heirs. When whispers of a defiant terie reach the obsidian throne, the Empire recognizes the existential threat not just to its armies, but to its infallible doctrine. Giantridge unleashes its full, terrifying might to scour the plains and salt the earth. Forced to unite fractured tribes and terrified elders, Bodaway must transform a broken people into a unified resistance. As the imperial war machine closes in, and a conflicted young prince marches to execute a massacre he secretly despises, Bodaway will discover that fighting an empire requires more than just surviving. It requires the strength to remember who you are when the world demands you be nothing. In a world of iron and ash, can a forgotten memory unmake an empire?