jonathan nolan

In a world where every life is measured by Circles, Nolan was born without any—and with something far more terrifying instead. Born a slave and branded a monster for the obsidian scales covering half his face, Nolan has spent his entire life being treated as less than human. The only reason he ever learned to endure was Lili, the girl who refused to look at him like a curse. But one desperate act shatters the life they know and throws them into the hands of a mysterious noble, where Hunters, monsters, and buried secrets are only the beginning. Nolan should have died long ago. Instead, he awakens something impossible inside himself: a power that ignores the laws of the world, reacts to danger like a living instinct, and grows more dangerous every time he uses it. A mysterious voice whispers in his head. A seal on his body begins to crack. And every battle pushes him closer to a state where strength and humanity cannot survive together. As Nolan and Sara are dragged deeper into a war they never asked for, impossible events begin to follow in their wake. Cities fall. Anomalies tear open the land. Powerful factions begin hunting for the source of Nolan’s power, while Genesis—an organization that rules through fear, violence, and control—offers him a choice no one should ever have to make: join them, or watch everything he loves be destroyed. With Emilia depending on him, Lili’s fate tied to a growing storm, and Sara becoming the one person he cannot afford to lose, Nolan is forced toward a forbidden ritual that could save him from himself—or bind him even more tightly to the fate he is trying to outrun. Some monsters are created. Others are forged. And some were never meant to exist at all.