FALL of MEN

The Mother has recovered in the generations since the Fall. Rivers flow and the land is green, once again. Her scars are healing and the survivors’ descendants have lived in a long peace amid the ruins of the Ancients. The Old World has turned to dust… the Mother churning its decay into good soil. 

Twenty-seven year-old Nairi Raine has been left in the dark all her life, tucked away safely in her insular mountain village, dreaming of the lands beyond her village boundary. She does not know that an empire is rising beyond Wasacha, that they are restarting the machines of civilization - and that, soon, they will be on her doorstep as a brutal, murderous colonizing force of destruction. 

She does not know that she will soon be plunged into the war they’re waging upon the Realms of Free Men… until one of the Empire’s scouting parties murders her mother. 

Propelled by revenge and grief, Nairi investigates this enemy, and learns she is tethered to this conflict more than she ever could have imagined. She risks exile as she enters the fray with a secretive group of Rangers, finding herself face-to-face with the weight of her ignorance – and the fear that this enemy will steal everything from her, even her own humanity.

Led by the haunted and cerebral Zia Adhara, these Rangers are a Vanguard who have been preparing for this moment for generations… preparing to prevent an empire from claiming the Earth ever again. 

As Zia grapples with his own hate and the weight of his past, he teaches Nairi about the Fall of Men and the scale of the enemy they face – an enemy fueled by more than just machines and oil and slaves. 

Nairi finds herself torn between her community and the Rangers, between grief and forbidden love, and as secrets are revealed, between the world she thought she knew and the truth of what the world can become.