AETHER: THE AWAKENING

In the city of Orin, Aether is everywhere. It powers the trains, the buildings, the communication networks—and the systems that determine who can use it. Evan Reed has always been ordinary. At eleven, his Aether assessment returned a simple result: AETHER USER: NO He accepted it. He built a quiet life, working deliveries and living with his mother. Then, one day, a steel beam falls toward a worker. Evan moves. Not quickly. Not with strength. The distance simply… disappears. The Aether system records something impossible: UNIDENTIFIED AETHER RESPONSE But every test afterward says the same thing. AETHER USER: NO As Evan searches for an explanation, he discovers that his father's death may not have been the accident everyone claimed. Thomas Reed was once involved in a classified research project known as Project Seventeen, a project built around a terrifying possibility: Aether may not be a source of power. It may be a network. And something on the other side may be responding. Soon, abnormal Aether incidents begin appearing across the world. People with no recorded Aether ability start experiencing impossible phenomena. The intervals between incidents grow shorter. Then Evan begins seeing the connections between them. For the first time, humanity is forced to confront a question it has never been prepared to ask: What happens when Aether stops responding to humanity—and starts responding on its own? Because Evan Reed may not be the cause. He may only be the first sign. And the awakening has already begun.