Arise · #1 / 6
Alpha
When you steal a hundred grand from some very bad people, the best way to survive is to stay small and quiet...
Possibly its not to save a pair of drowning girls, not go 'viral' on social media and certainly not to let the local police take your passport, trapping you on a small 'party' island in the middle of the Mediterranean Sea.
But Steve isn't the average guy, he's ex-military, ex-enforcer and ex-human. He's a one man nanite fuelled nightmare for those that cross the line, and he's decided that its time to clean up his act. He's going to make up for the things he's done, and save 'the little guys'.
It's a nice fantasy, but even he has to admit, it's really just a justification, because he's a very bad man, with horrifying abilities, and he's only just learning what he's capable of. He needs a reason to not go to the dark, and if thats hunting down the creatures of the night and beating them to death with their own femurs?
Well, he's just the man for the job.
Stolen money. Greek Islands. Werewolves and Enforcers... what could possibly go wrong?
The series
In a world where myth bleeds into machinery, where werewolves and nanites share the same pulse, one man stands on the edge of something vast and terrible. The Arise series by Jez Cajiao begins with a single broken soldier, Steve, whose body and soul are rebuilt by forces that blur the line between science and the divine. What starts as survival quickly unravels into revelation, exposing the truth that humanity was never the apex of creation but a weapon built for someone else’s war.
Read full series description
Each book deepens the fracture between what Steve was and what he is becoming. The nanites that saved him are evolving, rewriting him in ways that test his control, his morality, and his faith in what it means to be human. Ancient races stir, forgotten empires whisper from the dark, and every act of defiance drags him closer to a destiny written long before his birth. It’s not just a fight against monsters, it’s a reckoning with creation itself.
Blending the grit of dark fantasy, the escalation of LitRPG progression, and the vastness of science fantasy, this series doesn’t hold your hand, it drops you into chaos and dares you to climb out. Fans praise its brutal honesty, its complex world-building, and the way it refuses to give easy answers. Every victory feels earned, every loss leaves a scar.
For readers drawn to antiheroes, intricate lore, and worlds that feel both ancient and futuristic, Arise offers something rare: a journey that questions power, purpose, and the cost of evolution. It’s a story about what rises when the old world falls, and whether the man who survives it can still call himself human.
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