Nearly 50 years after the fall of civilization, humanity clings to survival within the towering walls of Paragon, the last known human stronghold on a broken Earth. Outside the walls, the Wastelands crawl with Hydramors: shapeshifting, merciless beasts responsible for the near extinction a mankind. Inside, eighteen-year-old Arelie Bowden yearns for vengeance against them. 

Orphaned by Hydramors who breached Paragon’s walls and slaughtered her parents, Arelie has spent a majority of her life training to join Paragon’s elite militia. Despite her efforts, Arelie is turned away—branded too weak, too precious, too… female. In Paragon, women have one duty: repopulate the Earth, not reclaim it.

Determined to prove everyone wrong and avenge her parents, Arelie does the unthinkable. She escapes into the Wastelands to kill a Hydramor and establish herself as the valuable asset she knows she can be. But what she discovers beyond the walls will soon shatter everything she has ever known, about Paragon, these creatures, her own past, and her future.

As secrets buried in Paragon’s dark history began to unravel, Arelie must choose: remain loyal to the system that both built and rejected her, or embrace the terrifying unknown, igniting a flame that could possibly shed light on a shadowy world… or catch fire, burning what’s left of it to the ground.