Ashes of the Forgotten Core
In a world abandoned by the stars, survival is an achievement, and hope is a resource more scarce than oxygen.Two hundred years ago, the Corefall shattered the Earth. A vast artificial intelligence buried beneath the planet’s crust, once humanity’s crowning achievement, malfunctioned. In its collapse, it tore the boundaries between reality and unreality, merging science and sorcery, logic and lunacy.Now, cities float in fragmented sky zones, continents drift like broken icebergs, and beneath them, the Ashlands stretch endlessly, a ruined surface where monsters born from data corruption and dimensional collapse roam, feeding on thought, memory, and flesh alike.Sixteen-year-old Riven Kael lives at the edge of extinction in one of the last border colonies. Orphan. Drifter. Ghost. Another disposable cog in a world choking on its own history.Until he finds it.A fragment of the Core, dormant, half-dead, whispering with voices not meant for human minds.It calls itself Echo-Null, and it offers Riven a deal: power and knowledge. A second chance at life.But there’s a catch.To master the Core’s gifts, Riven must dive into the Shatternet, a broken reflection of the world, filled with twisted versions of real people, ancient AIs with god complexes, and landscapes made from forgotten code and collapsed timelines.Each descent risks madness. Each victory warps his mind. And something old, something watching, is drawing closer with every Echo he absorbs.In a world where every upgrade rewrites your soul, and every memory might be a lie…What makes you human when the only thing left of you is data and will?