Refraction: The First Principle of Light
August Valen’s world is defined as perfect by the Utopian society known simply as a Center. No financial strife, no hard labor, and no filthy humans from the Under, the lawless lands outside a Center. The children in the Centers are taught this normality since birth, but not all see it that way.
When August finds himself uprooted from his life and banished to another Center across the ocean by his widowed father, he complies under false assumptions. His father believes that what August doesn’t know can’t hurt him.
That is the premise of the Center’s ideology, but August will soon come to learn just how faulty his society is.
And that fissure runs deeper than he ever could have imagined, with the load of an ancient responsibility that he never desired.
Diffraction: The Second Principle of Light
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A boy from a once simple and direct life in the Utopian Center, August has learned that Christianity’s Garden of Eden is more than legend. The hidden Garden’s grand shores are open for any to find, no matter their heart’s intention, and the Artificial Intelligence, or AI, Ares may be the only hope of discovering its location before something else does.
But August is not alone. A girl named Riley and her AI, Athena, sister of Ares, yield from the Under, the reverse side of the Center. With them, they bring a unique toolset and attitude, honed in the streets as a means of survival.
While the duo and their AIs try to sort through the rabbit hole of anomalies in the present, a man named Hoddgins attempts to prevent things in the past from ever-spiraling in the first place by combining both unholy and unsanctioned acts.
But none of them would be prepared for the truth underlying the Garden of Eden, regardless their time or class.
Reflection: The Final Principle of Light
August and Riley have been separated in different pockets of time, AI partners swapped.
In the past, Hoddgins discovers the unconscious August and failing Athena in the Garden of Eden, forcing an uneasy acquaintance. They along with others must put an end to the king’s destructive path before his scheme fully unfolds at the annual Festival of Life.
Meanwhile, in the present, Riley discovers Ares’ malicious intentions, only to be bullied into keeping it a secret. Together, they launch a desperate attempt to stop the unseen force known as the Xurgadose – an attempt that will pit Riley against an enemy far more powerful than either Ares or the Xurgadose: herself.
Both August and Riley must face their inner reflections and choose whether to foster the chaos or order within, their decisions to have impacts strong enough to ripple through time and space. Humanity’s continued existence is about to be forever altered.