From publisher blurb:
Tanathas, the gleaming jewel of the Alaric Verge, stands as a testament to humanity's boundless ambition and innovation. Towering spires pierce the smog-laden sky, their surfaces rippling with shifting displays of light and data. The city hums with life—millions of souls linked through neural grids and augmented by cybernetic enhancements. The air itself seems alive, saturated with the chatter of distant voices and the endless hum of machinery. Yet, beneath the luminescent veneer lies a festering wound, a truth that few dare to acknowledge: Tanathas is dying. The signs are subtle, a slow unravelling that creeps through the planet like a shadow. Machines that once obeyed with perfect precision now glitch and falter. The skies, once clear and brimming with artificial stars, darken with an unnatural haze. Whispers spread through the back alleys and encrypted networks of a disaster brewing—a calamity with the power to unmake everything humanity has built. And at the heart of this growing storm lies a mystery: an ancient force awakening, its influence seeping into the very bones of the city. The elites of the Prime Ascendancy claim that they have everything under control. From their ivory towers, they dismiss the fears of the masses, their gilded words promising a brighter tomorrow. But even they cannot ignore the cracks forming in their shining empire. Rumours of sabotage and rebellion swirl, fuelled by the enigmatic Ebon Accord, a coalition of rogue operatives and dissenters determined to dismantle the Ascendancy's stranglehold on the world. They believe the coming disaster is no accident, but rather the result of the Ascendancy’s hubris—an experiment gone awry, a secret too terrible to remain buried. As the city's factions prepare for the storm, whispers of an artifact, the Eclipse Core, ripple through the underground. A relic of a forgotten age, it is said to hold the power to tip the balance—to save Tanathas or doom it entirely. Both the Ascendancy and the Accord seek it, their agents scouring the city and the ruins below in a race against time. But the Core is not a simple prize to be claimed. It carries with it a cost—a resonance that calls to those desperate or daring enough to seek it.