Resonance of Ash

Fifteen-year-old Jace has spent four years mining the toxic ravines beneath the floating city of Aethelgard—breaking rock, meeting quotas, keeping his mother, grandmother, and five-year-old brother alive. His father died in the dark below. Jace expects to do the same.

Then he finds the egg.

Buried in a sealed hollow, warm to the touch, it hatches into a creature that should not exist—a beast from a species the ruling Vanguard hunted to extinction centuries ago. Its amber eyes lock onto Jace, and a bond forms that requires no incantation, no noble bloodline, no permission. Just a boy and a predator older than the city above, choosing each other in the dark.

Bonding without registry is a death sentence. Bonding this beast is something the most powerful people in the world cannot allow. When the Wardens close in, Jace makes the only choice left: leave everything he loves behind and take his new companion, Silas, up into the city that was never meant for either of them.

The Vanguard Academy was built to train weapons for the elite. Jace arrives in soot-stained clothes with no name, no house, and a creature that makes every bonded beast in the building go silent. The nobles see a stain on their floors. The beasts see something else entirely.