In a prison of silence and stone, a broken girl must learn to fly with wings of ash.
Specimen 7 has no name, no past, and no hope. For years, she has existed in the grey hell of the Somnolence Spire, a prisoner of her own body. Her wings, once capable of flight, are now heavy slabs of petrified stone—a cruel curse that drags her down into the dark. Under the cold, clinical gaze of Maester Volkov, she is nothing more than an experiment to be studied, a broken thing to be measured and scraped for dust.
But the silence of her cell is shattered by a voice through the wall.
Rhazien is a warrior of shadow and starlight, an ancient being betrayed by his own kind and left to rot in the cell next door. He knows the truth of what she is—an Aethel, a creature of immense, dormant power. And he has a plan.
Bound by a secret oath and a shared hatred for their captor, Rhazien teaches her to turn her pain into fuel and her grief into a weapon. But as her power awakens, so does the hunger of the parasitic curse on her back. To escape, she must do the impossible: she must ignite the volcano within her soul and learn to fly with wings of stone.
As the twin suns align for a rare eclipse, the time for stealth is over. Volkov knows their secret, and he is coming to silence them forever. In a final, desperate bid for freedom, Specimen 7 must choose between vengeance and salvation, and discover if a monster made of fractured starlight can ever truly be free.
Tropes:
Forced Proximity: Two prisoners separated by a single wall, bound by a shared fate.
Mentor/Student to Lovers: An ancient warrior teaches a broken girl to harness her power, forging a bond that transcends the physical.+1
Touch Starved: Years of isolation make a single touch through a vent an explosive, life-changing event.
Shadow Daddy: Rhazien is a being of living night who wraps his shadow around her light to protect her.
Hurt/Comfort: They heal each other’s physical and spiritual wounds in the aftermath of torture.
Power Couple: She is the sun, he is the void, and together they are unstoppable.
Escape from Hell: A high-stakes breakout from an impossible prison.
