Humanity has lost Earth. Now, in the distant future, survivors from across the galaxy have gathered on the planet Novus, where three powerful factions vie for dominance. Technology has replaced blood and flesh, and the only path to power lies through mechanical enhancement and unquestioning loyalty to the empire.
Luca is a boy from the slums with a single dream: to join the Accretian Imperial Guard. The Accretia Empire is a totalitarian, human-only regime ruled by a rigid class system and a military of cybernetic soldiers. As a low-class citizen who has replaced his limbs and eyes with prosthetics, Luca embodies the empire’s ideals of strength through sacrifice. He has never questioned the system that raised him. He believes in the empire completely.
Then he meets Ilay Kartika, a fellow trainee from a noble family. Ilay is everything Luca is not, privileged and deeply skeptical of the regime they both serve. Through their unlikely friendship, Luca begins to see the cracks in the empire’s foundation and is forced to confront a terrifying question: has his entire life been built on a lie?
Luca must choose between the only dream he has ever known and the truth that could destroy everything he believes in. The empire raised him. The empire gave him a purpose. But the empire is also hiding something terrible
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