the bedrock screams

Elyan, heir to the desert city of Heliqar, has always believed the world runs on cause and effect. As the prince who engineered a safe trade route across the deadly Red Sand Sea, he trusts discipline and rationality above all else. When a dying woman entrusts him with a set of artifacts unlike anything he’s ever studied—devices that respond not to strength or skill but to intent—Elyan becomes determined to unravel their precise, inexplicable rules one by one. His discovery draws the attention of Heliqar’s most ruthless enemy. Captured and taken deep into their territory, Elyan must finish deciphering the artifacts while navigating a system built on cruelty and fear. The more he learns, the clearer it becomes: the artifacts’ power is fundamentally incompatible with the logic of the state that now holds him prisoner. To save himself and protect his city, Elyan must decide how far he’s willing to push a tool that exposes injustice with perfect, merciless precision—and what it means to wield that power inside a nation defined by it.