Inner Fire

When a mutated beast attacks, Justin does not hesitate. His body moves on muscle memory alone, striking with a precision he never learned. The terrifying part isn't the wilderness that swallowed the old world. It is that he already knows how to kill, and he has no idea why. Four hundred years after the Double Death, he woke in a forest with a head wound that had already closed and a name he could not remember. The woman who found him is a Lightbringer. She's part of the order that follows the True Light, while the rest of the world learned to survive without it. She sees what he eats without dying. She sees how fast he runs. She knows what that means, and she is not telling him yet. The Collective knows too. They have put their best Field Commander on him, and every settlement that shelters him pays for it. What none of them say out loud is that something made of Shadow was waiting the moment he arrived, and it has not let go since. To survive, Justin has to reach the power he can feel burning under his skin, without letting it turn him into a monster. But that fire might burn away the very soul he is trying to piece together.