The Singularity (Excerpt)

Note: this is still in rough draft form.

In a world where happiness infuses the very dirt of its ruins, the young illusionist Fier would much rather brood beneath the black hole at the heart of the planet. His mother is dead, cornered by a caste system that thrust her from glory, and his reason for living died with her. But when Fier, a dyslexic with only mediocre Lightsifting power, takes a mandatory aptitude test at age 17, his mind is thrust up against the mind of one of the seven leaders of his crumbling planet... and he wins. Now, at 17, he's an undefeatable ruler of the free world, and no one knows why.

Untrained and unwanted, Fier couldn't be any more jaded--and if this was his chance to bring his mother's lost legacy back into the light... screw that, these people don't deserve it. But the person he unwillingly defeated was key to a plot to save the world, and now Fier must take her place, or else his father and sister will die with the rest of these people he doesn't care about. Armed with nothing but mediocre powers and the language only he and his mother knew, he faces his first mission... only to uncover a missive written in that very language, by the fallen leader that cost his family everything. Through those words, Fier untangles the mystery of his world's past... and sees its future. Now he must choose between caring enough to risk killing everything, or caring so little that the bastards all win.