Ashfall Covenant

The sky tears open above Denver at 2:17 a.m., and the world is assigned a price. Cities become hunting grounds, highways split into dungeon corridors, and every survivor is branded by a merciless System that rewards violence, risk, and ambition. Former wildfire smokejumper Mara Vance wakes beneath a rain of ash and blue notifications to find her apartment tower overrun by things that should not exist—bone-limbed scavengers, skinless hounds, and neighbors already changing into something worse. To live through the first night, she forms a desperate pact with the last people trapped inside: a combat nurse, a conspiracy podcaster, a runaway teen, and a dying priest who hears the System whisper back.

But the real horror begins after dawn. Safe zones are not safe. Classes are not gifts. Every awakening carries a hidden cost, and Mara’s rare class—Ashbinder—feeds on the dead while tying her to the burning rift hanging over the Rockies. As factions rise inside fortified districts and monster waves carve the weak from the strong, Mara must decide what kind of leader she will become. Because the System did not come to test humanity. It came to auction Earth, and the first bids have already been placed.