Discovered in the Dark

Rise & Ruin

By: JJ Kang

Narrated by: Savannah Thomas

Kennex Hall died, but he did not stay dead.

Living on the edges of Wild Space and working for an infamous criminal often puts him in the crosshairs of the law. In fact, he and his partner, Ari Barlow, make a habit of chasing trouble for the right price. They are not strangers to tangling with Enforcers, but they never caused enough harm to warrant the attention of an Ascendant—a being to who death is simply an inconvenience. Not until a routine job on a desolate planet turned deadly, that is.

Kennex never expected to meet one of these immortals.

He never expected to be killed by one either.

Even more shocking, he never expected to resurrect as an Ascendant himself.

Torn from the one person in the universe he trusts, Kennex wakes on Illyarium. Third capital world from Sol and the self-proclaimed center of the Meridian System. His new immortal status leaves a bad taste in his mouth as he spent most of his life cursing the very existence of these pompous gods. All he wants is to return to Outer Orbit—return to Ari. However, Kennex learns his sudden ascension into immortality has heavier implications than he could imagine, and his partner is in the vicinity of a sinister force whose very existence threatens the fabric of the universe.

As he assimilates deeper into his new surroundings, he slips further from the person he was. To save Ari, Kennex will have to accept his fate, but he isn’t sure his partner will recognize him by the end of this war.

©2025 J.J. Kang (P)2025 J.J. Kang