A Measure of Mercy

Steven Skeyrs wants nothing to do with faith, rebellion, or anyone else's suffering. His only rule is simple: keep his sons alive.

Then thirteen-year-old Caleb wakes with a strange geometric mark burned into his skin.

The government calls it a developmental abnormality. Families are urged to report marked children for screening. The children who are taken rarely come back.

Forced to flee Ashford with Caleb and his younger brother John, Steven joins a dangerous underground transport network moving marked children beyond the reach of the authorities. What begins as a desperate escape becomes something far more unsettling as old ruins, hidden records, broken signs, and forgotten histories begin to suggest that the world Steven was taught to accept may not be telling the whole truth.

But survival comes at a cost.

Every mile forces Steven to confront the rule that has governed his life for years: protect your own, and let everyone else fend for themselves. And as sacrifice, grief, faith, and fear begin to reshape the people around him, Steven must decide whether keeping his sons alive is enough-or whether mercy demands something more.

A Measure of Mercy is the first book in The Broken Measure, a dystopian speculative saga about faith after defeat, the moral price of survival, and what remains when humanity believes Heaven has abandoned it.