Structural Damage

In Oakhaven, the higher you live, the safer you are. But the truth is buried in the foundation. Merritt is a Structural Investigator with a clinical obsession and a rare, terrifying gift: Echo-Location. She doesn't just see buildings; she feels their memories. By touching a wall, she can reconstruct the violence that cracked it. She is cold, efficient, and detached—until she is ordered to the Foundation Sector. The city is shaking. The massive brutalist towers of Oakhaven are groaning under their own weight, and the source of the instability is a man named Gant. Gant is a Load-Bearer, a human anchor physically bound to the bedrock, channeling raw, gritty magic to keep the city upright. He is industrial, dangerous, and in constant, agonizing pain. He is also the prime suspect in a conspiracy to bring the city down. To find the fault line, Merritt must get close. Too close. Her investigation requires physical contact to read his structural integrity, forcing her into the personal space of a man who radiates heat and destruction. But as Merritt digs her fingers into Gant's fractured psyche, she finds that the noise in his head isn't madness—it's a warning. The city isn't just falling; it's being pushed. And the only thing stronger than the concrete crushing them is the magnetic, ruinous pull between the investigator and her suspect. He is the collision she never saw coming. She is the only structure he doesn't want to break.