Shadow

In District Five the lights are always on, because the dark never leaves.

Jamie and Ashley Duskburne grow up on the eighty-eighth floor of a fortress block under the Veil. Jamie is the twin the Empire's instruments read as null. Ashley is the bright one, third-best on every exam by careful design, hiding a gift for patterns that nobody was supposed to find.

The Empire finds it anyway.

South in the Rust Belt, Nekato Ren climbs a waterwall in the dark to reach the Ridge and the Shogun who will make her the second-greatest sword fighter alive. She comes home to help build the HIVE, and to carry more weight than anyone knew a Shadow Titan could bear.

Told in turns by Jamie, Ashley, and Nekato, Shadow: Locust follows three lives in the dark toward the same night in District Six, where the things they never said to each other are finally paid for.

Shadow: Locust is one of the concurrent prequels of the Elemental Saga in The Gaia Chronicles. Each follows a different member of the HIVE to the same night in District Six, and they can be read in any order.