ASH AND CROWN

Renan's sister is dying. The medicine she needs doesn't exist in the Lower Zone. Not legally. Not cheaply. Not at all. The clinics are empty, the shelves are bare, and the doctor who still tries has nothing left to offer except honesty that cuts worse than the disease. When the Harvest Runs are announced, Renan signs his name on the ledger. The Runs are simple. You go underground. You drag back whatever the city needs from tunnels it won't send its own people into. If you survive, they pay you. If you don't, they replace you. He was ready for the dark. He was ready for the danger. He was ready to bleed for a chance at saving her. He was not ready for what lies beneath the city. Something woke up down there. Something ancient and wrong that moves through stone as if it were born inside it. Something that killed without hesitation and then stopped, right in front of him, for reasons no one can explain. Now the people who run the city want answers. They want to know what he saw. They want to know why he survived. And they are willing to burn everything he loves to drag those answers out of him. Renan wanted medicine. He got a war.