Galactic Embers

Galactic Embers
Choir Engine Cycle — Book 1
Ian N. Rank
In the long twilight after a vanished golden age, star-sparrows nest in cathedrals of metal and light—Dyson swarms, ringworld shards, world-shells that still hum with forgotten purpose. Most call them relics. Kael, a quiet son of a trade family raised among orchard decks and hull plating, hears something else: a song.
Drawn by a melody no one else can hear, Kael follows ghost-lane beacons to Winter Mantle, a hollow world turned inward to a living Eden. There, a serene mind older than empires welcomes him alone. Its avatar speaks of the Unified Galactic, the civilization that once stitched the stars together—and of a secret sown against their fall: an encoded legacy sleeping in human DNA.
Kael is the convergence of that design—the first to wake. With a shard of living light at his heart and a chorus of ancient machine-minds at his back, he must choose what kind of dawn to call down. Relight the Veilways, the instantaneous Thread that could make the scattered worlds one again—or let a fractured galaxy keep its fragile peace.
Escorted by wardens that shine like lantern-nights and guided by the dry wit of his aunt-born AI, Kael learns the etiquette of impossible power: arrive as shelter, not as blade; bow to the sky you could break. But in a universe where every beacon is a summons and every gate a promise, even patience changes everything.
Galactic Embers begins the Choir Engine Cycle—a luminous, wonder-forward space saga about inheritance, courtesy, and the courage to open the door slowly when the whole galaxy is knocking.