Dead Awake

Dead Awake is a dark urban fantasy/horror story about a hidden war humanity forgot it already survived.

Long before history, during a spiritual war that reshaped reality, humanity evolved a last-resort biological failsafe. When the mind detects possession or metaphysical corruption, it can shut the self down and enter a ruthless war state. The body keeps moving. The person disappears. In this state, humans are immune to fear, temptation, and control, and devastatingly efficient at killing what doesn't belong in the world. Demons don't hunt these people. They avoid them.

Some families, bloodlines closer to the original human blueprint, have carried this burden for generations, forming a secret order of hunters who train, contain, and fight in the shadows. Most of the world calls it sleepwalking, dissociation, or mental illness. The Order knows it's a weapon.

The story follows Jason, who doesn't come from a bloodline. He just grew up beside one. His best friend, Micah, vanishes when his own war state takes over to confront a distant threat, and that same night demons possess Micah's parents to abduct his younger brother, who is just beginning to awaken. The attack is a diversion, and it works. The brother is taken. Jason survives only by triggering the failsafe himself for the first time, discovering he's become something he never agreed to be.

Before dying, one of the demons delivers a final warning: the Inner Circle has activated, ancient, first-fallen entities so powerful they're considered myths even among the bloodlines. As the Order realizes its oldest enemies are no longer hiding, Jason is pulled into a war where the only thing more dangerous than the monsters hunting humanity is the weapon humanity becomes when it turns itself off.