[ONC 2024 Longlister] [2nd place Pride Awards 2024 winner] [Fantasy Winner of the EC Fiction Awards 2024] [Pride Shelf November 2024 Book of the Month] [3rd place Rose Gold Awards 2025 Best Action Scene winner] [Spotlight Division Winner in the Grand Fiction Awards 2025] From the Forest, all life sprung. And to the Forest, it may return. Umirin's people have lived within the ancient, powerful Forest since they had sprung to life there many generations ago. They respect the land they live off and worship the Heart of the Forest, the divine beast who sowed the seed it grew from long ago. Since its creation, the Forest had grown mighty. It is eternal. It is home. At least it had been, until a great tragedy many seasons ago changed everything. Now Umi's nation lives above the forest, in houses built on beams, to escape from the roaming beasts below known as Soulbiters. They are dangerous and deadly, but rooted to the Forest floor, only able to burrow through the soil. Above the tree tops, the people are safe from them. But man is not made to live floating in the clouds, and there are times when they have to travel to the ground. These trips are done by the best warriors and hunters, but encounters with the beasts are inevitable, and lives are still regularly lost to their curse. When Umi's beloved husband Shani is grabbed by the Soulbiters, he is prepared to do anything to save him from the gruesome fate that awaits if he is bitten. Anything at all. Even strike a horrible bargain with the beasts.

Five years after the Rebirth, where the Heart of the Forest was returned to its rightful place, much has changed. The Wezrin Sah, a liberated nation of the Soulbiter curse, have returned to the ground, to their roots, and rebuilt their society even better than before, having regained access to much they had lost while living up above. The hunters have regained their humanity, and returned to their people, although they face much hardship in the face of scorn and judgment for their ancient crimes. Umirin and Shanirin have disappeared off into the depths of the Forest, living alone far away, for this very same reason. Things are as well as they can be, until the Forest stirs the hunters with strange dreams, dreams that show them a secret yet unseen by mortal eyes, a secret kept in the very Heart of it. A secret, that will change the course of the world's history yet again, and if they do not act fast, this time, it will be irreversible.

Her world is a wasteland swept by a mysterious calamity no one remembers. Her people hide away in thriving little Pocket Shires across their dead planet, making the best of what they have, even when it isn't much. And Sora yearns to be the one to discover the truth behind it all. To learn the forgotten histories behind the ruined state of everything. An orphan since birth, Sora is almost 18 now, almost considered fully mature. Now more than ever, her convictions are strong, of joining the Waste Scouts, and venturing with them beyond the forcefields keeping their communities safely contained, something deep in her bones calling out to her from the lost reaches of the wasteland. Something that, she believes, will lead her to all the answers she seeks, for both herself and her people. To make matters even more urgent, the stars are dying, and have been all her life. One by one, they've been disappearing from the sky, leaving the world in a deeper and deeper darkness. If her homeland's star burns out this way, it'll spell doom for everyone and everything still left standing. Sora is determined not to let that happen, but she has no idea just how much she doesn't know, and as her path to discovery begins, she'll quickly have to learn that not everything is as it seems. Not even close.