Eli Navarro already saved one world. He was never supposed to have to save another.
Home on Earth after a hundred years that lasted fifteen months, Eli wants only the quiet life he lost - his job, his mother's kitchen, the ordinary weight of ordinary days. Then he starts finding the wrong line in the logs: people who have quietly stopped choosing. A stillness spreading through the feeds and the crowds and the tired evenings of a whole distracted world.
The thing he defeated in Orvaeth has found the one place he thought was safe. It doesn't conquer. It offers rest. And a sleeping world is saying yes.
A worn traveler named Hester knows why his hand was marked - and knows the one way a world like this can still be woken. Not by a savior. Not all at once. But slowly, one person at a time, until refusal becomes the weather.
The Last Waking is the final book of The Mark of Ash.