Mara Vale has survived Veyra by being ordinary.

In a walled city where the ruling Houses register magic and execute those who use it without permission, a maintenance worker with forbidden Resonance knows the first rule of survival: never give them a reason to look twice.

Then a child runs into the line of fire.

Mara silences one Black Guard rifle—and accidentally shuts down every linked weapon in Execution Square. Commander Kael Veyr sees exactly who did it.

He should send her to central detention. Instead, he claims her as a coerced informant and offers a bargain: help him uncover why unregistered Resonants are vanishing from the city's records, and he will investigate the sealed disappearance of Mara's parents.

Kael is the face of the regime Mara hates: controlled, dangerous, and impossible to trust. But as falsified deaths, secret transfers, and hidden routes beneath Veyra point to a conspiracy inside the Houses themselves, escape stops being enough.

To survive, Mara may have to trust the enemy hunting the same truth—and decide what freedom is worth when a city built on obedience begins to crack.

The Last City of Ash is an adult dystopian romantasy with true enemies-to-lovers tension, forced proximity, forbidden magic, found family, and rebellion.