WakeFall

Kael Robin used to kill people for a living. He was damn good at it too, until the day his daughter was born. For years after that, he tried to make up for all the blood on his hands. He used the same skills that once made him a monster to protect people instead. It wasn't much, but it was something. It was enough. Until it wasn't. His redemption dies in a rain-soaked alley, a sniper's bullet through his chest, his six-year-old daughter crying in his arms. That should have been the end. Instead, a goddess named Elyra offers him something impossible: a second chance. Her world, WakeFall, is falling apart, and she needs someone like him. Someone who knows what it means to fight. To survive. To protect. But before he can even take his first breath in this new life, something goes horribly wrong. A force called the Death Gate rips through the reincarnation process, corrupting Elyra's blessing and twisting something deep inside his soul. Instead of being reborn safely, Kael is thrown into the most dangerous place in WakeFall, a place where humans aren't supposed to survive. Now he's alone in a world choking with poison, crawling with monsters, and teetering on the edge of collapse. The man he was is gone. The name he carried is gone. All that's left is the man he chooses to become. He calls himself Riven. Haunted by the daughter he'll never see again and hunted by whatever is growing inside him, Riven has to figure out what this second life is really for. Is it the redemption he never earned? Or is he about to become something far worse than the assassin he left behind? Because ancient gates are waking up. Forgotten gods are stirring. And the thing inside him? It's getting stronger. Riven might be WakeFall's last hope. Or he might be the thing that finally destroys it.