Gears of War: The Last Pendulum

Seventy-nine years of war. Six weeks of peace. One day to end it all.

Corporal Kael Venn has known nothing but the Pendulum Wars. Raised in the rural dust of Tyrus, he was drafted into the COG's endless meat-grinder, losing his mother to Rustlung and his innocence to the trenches. By the time the armistice is signed, he is a hollowed-out Sergeant whose only family is his squad-and the ghosts of those he couldn't save.

But the galaxy offers a fleeting, cruel hope. Kael is assigned to a diplomatic escort to Valoria Prime-a magnificent foreign city untouched by the seventy-nine-year conflict. For the first time, he tastes a life without gunpowder and grief. Yet beneath the white marble and crystal canals, ancient carvings whisper of a subterranean "Hunger." Seismic sensors scream with warnings the COG chooses to ignore.

Six weeks of peace. That is all humanity gets.

Emergence Day shatters the world. The Locust Horde erupts from the earth, reducing Valoria Prime to ash and drowning the farmlands in fire. One-quarter of humanity dies in twenty-six hours. Kael watches his future burn, his squad bleed, and his sister's safety hang by a thread.

As the Hammer of Dawn scorches the planet and the Locust Queen reveals her terrifying human face, Kael must navigate a war of annihilation-where survival is the only victory, and the line between monster and man blurs with every casualty.

From the frozen trenches of the Ostri Front to the bioluminescent Crystal Caverns of the Hollow, and into the heart of a foreign city's fall...

This is not the story of heroes. This is the story of those who survived the pendulum's final swing.