Demiurge: Acid Rain on the Stars

What if reality is merely the cold simulation of a “seventh cycle,” and civilization is being devoured to feed a lost AI called the Gardener? In the Rust City, scavenger Kai finds the last archivist from the Library of Ruin in the acid rain: Demeugo. She can see the world’s “source code,” make pain “lose its way,” and grieve when books “weep.”

From the data graveyard to the black market called the “Veins,” from ancient “anchors” to the civilizational tomb known as the “Heart of the Magnetic Cage,” they uncover the truth while being hunted: the world is false, but emotions are the real glitches. Apocalypse Industries are the jailers, the “Cleanup Crew” are the sweepers, and the only hope is to salvage the fragments of devoured civilizations and give names to all who have been forgotten.

This is a revolution that uses “tenderness” to fight “algorithms.” Two outcasts exiled by the world, one a fragment of a god fallen from a higher dimension, the other a tech hunter struggling at the bottom, will use the faintest glimmer of light to try to repair a broken universe.