About the Book
The day that Rath’s curse began, he fell off The Wall.
Inside a black megastructure five hundred kilometers long, the Custodian Nation lives by rigid custom, arranged marriage, and the silent authority of an all-knowing Index. On the other side of The River, the Monitor Nation guards its own ancient laws — and its Shieldmaidens shoot first.
On the morning of his graduation, Rath attempts The Stunt: a forbidden crossing into Monitor territory that every lad whispers about and none complete. He makes it further than anyone expected. He meets a young woman who, with thirteen seconds of calculated boldness, binds him to a debt he does not yet understand. And then the Monitors drag him home in disgrace.
But the real trouble starts days later, when a routine fall awakens a Talent — magic the Custodian Nation rejects and fears above all else. Now Rath’s formidable Grandmother is marching him to a ruined Lyceum on The Roof with orders to teach himself control. The ground beneath The Wall has begun to shudder. A Monitor woman has filed a legal claim on his future. And the ancient Colossi — structures so vast their inhabitants forgot what they were built for — are starting to wake.
The Wall is Volume One of The Colossi — an epic-fantasy series of inherited duty, forbidden Talents, buried pre-Refuge history, political tension between rival nations, and the slow unraveling of colossal civilizations built on half-forgotten truths.