A forbidden rite of passage becomes the first step toward the truth behind a dying world.
The day that Rath’s curse began, he fell off The Wall. If he had not taken a Monitor dart to the knee just two days before, he was sure that he could have made the leap.
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 almost none survive. 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 doesn't 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 believed extinct 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 1 of The Colossi—a science-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.
