Hadrian Marlowe arrived on the wrong planet, at the right moment, driven by reasons that felt righteous. What followed would set the stars ablaze. History remembers him as a savior—the warrior who erased the alien Cielcin from the void. Others remember a villain—the destroyer of a sun, the executioner of four billion souls, including the Emperor himself, all in defiance of Imperial command.

But Hadrian was neither savior nor villain. He wasn’t even a soldier.

Running from a brutal legacy and a life destined for cruelty, Hadrian is cast adrift on a forgotten world at the edge of civilization. There, forced into the arena as a gladiator and caught in the web of alien courts and political intrigue, he finds himself drawn into a conflict he never chose, fighting for an Empire he cannot trust, against an enemy he cannot truly know.