Cinderborn

Three meters of basalt hid a truth the Spire buried for three centuries. Teshin Grael, a twenty-two-year-old miner bred for strong bone and dull thought, smuggles a single data core out of a sealed vault in his jaw — and learns the caste system that stunted his mind was never a survival adaptation. It was a lie, and it can be undone. Now the Archon is throttling the air his people breathe, and the only proof of the lie sits behind a lock keyed to genes Teshin was never given.