The Gladiator's Return (Protostar: The Elegies of Elysium || BOOK 1)

The gods are watching.

Seventeen-year-old Kallum Aurelius believes he was born for brilliance-equal parts scholar, soldier, and suicidal lore-obsessed adolescent. Raised to worship the Seven Isles of Elysium, a utopian society where the only law is luxury, he never feared what lay beyond its walls. He was trained to conquer it.

But when Kallum is dispatched on a mission in the frozen north by the Constellation - a militaristic institute dedicated to serving the Seventh Elysian Isle - a fireborn lion shatters his flawless record and nearly sends him stumbling one foot into the afterlife. Now branded a treasonist exile by the Dean of the Constellation herself, Kallum is forced to abandon his gilded life in Elysium for the uncharted wilds beyond Paradiso's safety - the Pit of Inferno. The worst part, aside from the ₳15,000,000 bounty on his head, navigating the world's underbelly with only a fraction of his memories, a half-powered aircraft, and a crew of castoffs serving as his companions in crime, is realizing the myths he dismissed as bedtime stories are not only true... but may be the source of them.

Along the way, Kallum begins to uncover something older than Elysium and the injustices it was built upon: a war forgotten, a weapon misplaced, and an identity he must learn to claim as his. He sets out on a cosmic quest to gain the blessings of each of the Dii Consentes through fourteen carefully-orchestrated labors - a godly gambit with rules cruelly simple: Victory means life. Failure invites chaos. And he is merely a pawn to be played.

The gods are watching. But the arena waits for its champion.