Restaint

A year after civilization collapsed, survival has become routine—but never safe.

Mara and Elias have endured behind the fragile protection of a survivor camp, surrounded by a world where the infected are changing and every journey beyond the perimeter can become a death sentence. But the walls that kept them alive were never going to hold forever.

When the camp falls, they are forced north with a group of survivors into territory that has grown more dangerous than anyone imagined. The infected are evolving. Settlements are disappearing. And rumors are spreading of the Dominion—a disciplined force that burns communities, weaponizes the infected, and absorbs those it leaves alive.

Mara possesses an unsettling ability to sense danger before it arrives. Elias understands systems, defenses, and how things fail. Together, they may give their people a chance. But the farther north they travel, the clearer it becomes that they aren’t simply running from the collapse anymore.

Something organized is coming. And survival may require deciding what they are willing to become before someone else makes that decision for them.