The Ember Theorist
Dr. Aris Thorne’s experiment in quantum resonance goes catastrophically wrong, tearing her from her 21st-century lab and hurling her into the smog-choked, Victorian-era city of Veridia. Here, coal smoke mixes with a more sinister mist, and ember-eyed monsters known as Wraiths stalk the streets, feeding on heat and life itself.
Her only hope is the Pyre Guard, an order of warriors who wield living blue fire. Their leader, Commander Kaelen Vance, is as cold and intimidating as the creatures he hunts. He sees Aris, with her modern clothes, dead smartphone, and talk of "physics", as a useless liability. But when Aris uses her scientific knowledge to disrupt a Wraith in a way he cannot, Kaelen offers a brutal ultimatum: use her strange intellect as a weapon for the Pyre Guard, or be left to die in the gutter. Thrust into a brutal new world, Aris must use her wits to understand the entropic energy of the Wraiths while navigating the dangerous and enigmatic commander who is more flame than man. But their fragile alliance is tested when Aris discovers her accidental arrival created a rift in reality, a rift that has drawn the attention of a ruthless corporation from her own time, led by a man who sees Veridia not as a home, but as a resource to be plundered.
Now, Aris and Kaelen must unite magic and science to face an enemy that can nullify their powers and a resurgence of nightmares born from their own scarred world. To save Veridia, they will have to break the very laws of reality, forcing them to confront what they are willing to sacrifice for each other and their future.
