MANBORN - The Oath (Hardcover) (ISBN-13: 9791098518522)

The world did not end when women vanished.

It learned to create sons without mothers.

In AYON, only the Man Born remain. No one remembers what came before the cycles, the optimization, or the system that teaches obedience in the name of freedom. Every Initiatee is given the same promise: forget the past, survive the colosseum, and one day Apotheosis will grant departure.

Rayon has always been one of the system's finest creations-flawless metrics, zero weakness, no questions raised. He believes this cycle will be the last he is built to endure.

Then he finds Euan in the forbidden sanctuary: beautiful, distant, and impossible to read, carrying the name that should have been erased from history. What begins as a chance encounter off-grid quickly escalates into something neither of them can afford: desire sharpened by suspicion, a hope dangerous enough to make Rayon question the world that made him.

From that moment on, AYON begins to turn against its most promising Initiatee.

One quest follows another with suffocating timing. So called virtual trials become more real than reality. Glimpses of the outer world appear where no truth should exist. System glitches that almost cost his life. And every step that seems to lead Rayon toward the exit only pulls him deeper into a design he is never meant to understand.

Is AYON tightening its algorithm because he is so close to escape?

Or is the man who makes him feel alive the final test before departure?

Rayon does not know.

But one thing is certain: this cycle will be his last.

He will break free-

one way or another.

Book One of the MANBORN series