LIGHT

In a city where the sun never sets, the brightest thing you can be is a target.

District One has no night. The noon hangs over Prism-7 without moving, the boulevards shine white, and the Light Titans called the Anima guard the Empire's first district with a devotion every child is taught to admire.

Berry Marcetio learns early what the Anima do to Titans the Empire never planned for. At twelve he watches a neighbor escorted off the walkway and erased. After that he keeps his own Light folded small at every table and on every transit, the size a polite boy should be. At twenty, on an ordinary afternoon, it stands up anyway.

Hunted through the endless noon, Berry is pulled out by Nekato Ren, the Shadow Titan who leads the HIVE, a resistance that smuggles flagged families beyond the Empire's reach. In the rain-soaked stacks of District Six he finds a family worth fighting beside: Nekato, her twin brother Neko, and their fierce young inventor sister, Cisi. He also finds his gift. Berry can cast Prisms, doubles made of light that stay standing and keep watch, and he weaves them into a web that lets the HIVE see the whole continent.

Then the web shows a hunt closing on his best friend. The only place left to hide Neko is the city Berry fled, the one district that would never think to look under its own noon. For eleven months Berry keeps the vigil, masking every surge of Neko's power while Pruning notices go up on the white walls.

What he uncovers in those months leads to a single night in District Six: a secret buried in the Empire's own archive, an impossible girl the Empire calls its own, and a voice inside the HIVE sending its secrets north. Berry has spent his life learning to watch. Soon he will learn what watching costs.

Light: Bee is a prequel to The Gaia Chronicles.

The FIVE prequels unfold at the same time and converge on the same night, so you can read them in any order.