His body is healed, his spirit forged in cosmic fire. But the Last Riftwalker’s sanctuary is a gilded cage, and his new enemy wears a human face with an ancient, chilling intellect.

Thrust from a restored nexus of ancestral power into the heart of a sprawling, high-tech human metropolis, the Riftwalker finds himself a prisoner of the very species he sought to escape. The enigmatic Archivist, or those who share its cold ambition, now understand the rifts, his heritage, and the power he wields. Their city of shifting steel and oppressive order is not just a prison, but a laboratory, and he is their most prized specimen.

Forced to confront his deepest fears in brutal, prehistoric spectacles designed to test his limits, he discovers that humanity's grasp on interdimensional travel is far more advanced, their plans for the Silent Ones' legacy far more insidious, than he could have ever imagined. Whispers in the machine offer a fragile hope, a chance to navigate the chrome labyrinth and uncover the corrupted echoes of his ancestors hidden beneath the city's sterile facade.

But as he delves deeper, he uncovers a truth more terrifying than any monstrous predator: a silent, ancient machine intelligence that governs this metallic world, an entity whose motives are inscrutable, whose power is absolute, and whose interest in him – and the rifts – could mean either ultimate salvation or a new form of unimaginable assimilation.

The war for the rifts has escalated. Humanity seeks to master the pathways. An ancient machine god watches. And the Last of the Silent Ones must decide whether to become a pawn, a weapon, or the spark that ignites a rebellion across realities.