Steel Ashes

In the rain-soaked industrial city of Haldenport, Elias Cole is a ghost—a trained killer forged in the state-run orphanages of the Northern Coalition. Numbed by years of silent execution for the shadowy Workshop, he accepts one final contract to eliminate Leo Vance, a sixteen-year-old orphan who possesses damning evidence against Stratus Logistics, a corporate giant that let a brake failure kill his father. But when Elias sees his own hollow past reflected in Leo's eyes, the bullet never flies. What begins as a mission becomes a desperate flight through a labyrinth of corporate cover-ups and hired hunters, forcing both to confront a monstrous system where human lives are just worn-out parts to be replaced. As the net tightens, Elias must decide whether one final act of defiance can grant them both a redemption that the world insists they do not deserve.