Banished

In a world where love across class lines means exile—or death—Kael Ashborn made the wrong choice.

Kael was just an engineer in Citadel Alpha, brilliant but invisible beneath the city’s strict genetic hierarchy. Then he fell in love with Eryn Caelum—heir to House Caelum, the surveillance power that sees everything.

Their forbidden romance should have stayed secret. It didn’t.

Now Kael is exiled to the Wastelands, sentenced to die among the clans the Citadel claims are savage and lawless. But the lies run deeper than he imagined. The clans aren’t monsters—they’re survivors of a system built on exploitation and control.

When Kael’s father is executed in a brutal purge of dissenters, everything changes. Grief becomes fury. Survival becomes resistance. And the exiled engineer becomes something the Five ruling Houses never expected:

A symbol. A leader. A threat.

As Kael unites Wasteland clans and Citadel defectors into an impossible coalition, the High Houses face their first real challenge in generations. But revolution comes with a price—paid in blood, betrayal, and the people Kael can’t save.

The war for Citadel Alpha will cost everything. And even victory won’t bring peace.

Perfect for fans of Pierce Brown’s Red Rising, The Hunger Games, and Dune—a character-driven sci-fi epic about power, resistance, and the cost of challenging a system that claims to be inevitable.