Sign-In
Cart
The First
Paperback
Publisher: Independently Published
Published: Aug 1 2026
Pages: 198
Weight: 0.54
Height: 0.50 Width: 6.00 Depth: 9.00
Language: English
When the world shook, they were taken.
One moment Max and Maria were living ordinary lives on a dying Earth... unconnected, unaware, and unprepared. The next, they woke in a place beyond understanding, watched by beings who had chosen them for reasons they refused to explain. Strangers to each other. Bound by circumstance. Cut off from everything they had ever known.
There are no answers at first. Only white rooms. Soft light. The quiet pressure of proximity and the growing realization that whatever took them has no intention of sending them back. Earth continues without them. Time moves differently. And the longer they remain, the clearer it becomes that they were never meant to return as the same people who left.
What begins as survival becomes something far more dangerous. Trust forms in the spaces between silence. Desire rises where resentment once lived. The irreversible choice to stop fighting what is happening and start becoming part of it settles over them like a second skin. Around them, others are chosen. New connections form. Bonds are tested under the weight of a purpose larger than any one of them.
They are the first.
The first to be kept. The first to be bound. The first to stand at the edge of a new world and decide what comes next.
On a planet untouched by human hands, with the old Earth already fading into memory, the first steps will decide everything... not only for themselves, but for every life that follows.
The First is a standalone science fiction story of abduction, forced connection, and the quiet, fierce decision to begin again when the only world you have ever known is already gone.
Also from
Hartwich, B. B.
Also in
Science Fiction
On the Calculation of Volume (Book I): Shortlisted for the 2025 International Booker Prize
Balle, Solvej
Paperback
Red Rising 3-Book Box Set: Red Rising, Golden Son, Morning Star, and an Exclusive Extended Excerpt of Iron Gold
Brown, Pierce
Paperback