CAIUM
For eight years, Kaeslev has catalogued other people's Cinders — the dormant stars every person carries, waiting to wake. She has never once wondered about her own.
That changes on Grading Day, when her Cinder ignites past every class the Ninth Tower's instruments have a name for. Off the scale. Unclassed. A designation invoked exactly once before, three hundred and forty years ago — for a candidate the Registry took into "protective custody" and never explained losing.
Now Central Registry wants her too, and the only person less willing to let history repeat itself is Von Asteria, the examiner who watched it happen the first time and has spent forty years regretting that she didn't stop it. With her best friend Bennu refusing to be left behind, Kaeslev runs — from the gleaming spires of K-2213B to the lawless volcanic world called Hell, where an ancient ring buried beneath ash and myth has waited three centuries for someone to answer the question it once asked a frightened young man named Nefen.
Somewhere past the edge of the charted sky, something enormous has just noticed her.
It is not finished watching.