False Sky: The First Layer

Ashar Vale is a university student preparing for an ordinary future in the Velkaryn Empire. Once expected to join the ranks of the gifted, he was passed over years ago and has learned to live with what might have been.

Then a routine university expedition takes him into the first layer beyond Kharast's gate, a vast, alien wilderness the Empire has spent centuries making controlled.

Ashar returns alive.

He does not return alone.

Something from beyond the gate has taken root inside him. Surviving it awakens senses and abilities he should not possess, while buried memories begin to surface around a past he can no longer trust.

Now discovery may be as dangerous as the presence sharing his body. To survive, Ashar must hide what he is becoming, uncover what was done to him, and seek answers beyond the Empire's approved paths before whatever recognizes what he carries finds him.

The First Layer is Book One of False Sky, a slow-burn science-fantasy series of dangerous gates, suppressed power, alien mystery, and the cost of becoming something no institution knows how to control.