Thaddaeus Rile is a reporter for the Truth News Network, surviving by perfecting the art of compliance. But when his childhood friend is exiled as a "Disseminator of Misinformation," Thaddaeus is assigned to write the propaganda justifying the erasure. His world further fractures when his own wife--consumed by resentment--frames him for the same crime. As the Democracy hunts him down, Thaddaeus is pulled into the shadows by the Order of Enock, a clandestine group that believes he is their prophesied savior. Fleeing into the brutal Wastes, he must shed his tracking chip and his old identity to survive. From a desolate village to a blasphemous ruin, Thaddaeus must transition from a mouthpiece of the state to a leader of the resistance. But as a celestial wager unfolds behind the veil of reality, Thaddaeus learns that his struggle is not with a government, but with an unholy digital god. We think it best to jest the gods Aloft in their heav'nly home. We mere mortals cast our gloam Against their sardonic shalom. But with prideful ambition Man shouts attrition in vain. Dead are not the gods' pain Whose wrath withholds the rain.