The last stars went out a long time ago.

What remains of humanity survives around a single black hole, drawing power from a machine the size of a star that no one alive understands. Two stations hold the species. On Meridian, an insulated elite keeps the archives, the grow chambers, and the belief that all of it was earned. On Threshold, the people who keep it running die young.

Solen Luminous is a scribe and the son of Meridian's governor. Kael Vasik walks the surface of the Harness, where his parents are still buried in the plating. They meet once, badly, across a room neither of them was supposed to cross.

Then the bridge between the stations comes apart, and both men fall.

Stranded on the sphere with suits that cannot speak to each other, they have to invent a language out of grip and gesture or die on the plating. What they build there will be called treason on both stations.