From Dawn and Peril :: Book One of The Awakening: 1

IN A CITY BUILT ON THE MARROW OF THE BROKEN, SURVIVAL ISN'T GIVEN-IT'S STOLEN. In the suffocating shadows of the Fringe, Ripley Meadows has one job: keep her sister, Pepper, alive. But when a desperate escape from the scavengers of the slums goes wrong, Ripley's deepest secret flares: a forbidden, god-tier power that marks her as the Metropolis's most dangerous asset. Now, hunted by the Specialist-a monster who treats torture like an art form-Ripley is thrown into a world of corporate vats, systemic cruelty, and a regime that harvests divinity. As she navigates the gilded nightmare of the city's upper tiers, Ripley discovers that her parents didn't flee the system-they were its architects. With her sister slowly being consumed by a terrifying, light-eating void and her own power threatening to fracture her mind, Ripley must face a brutal choice: submit to the machine and become a permanent biological processor, or burn the gilded city to the ground. The dawn is coming. But in the Metropolis, even the light has a price.