The Fifth Column

About this book

The empire runs on silence. She was never meant to break it. Sayra Ahmed has lived her life chasing fragments—her father’s vanished files, whispers of erased names, a warning he left behind: follow the silence, not the noise. When she’s pulled into the heart of the Asad Group, she finds more than corruption. She finds Araz Haris. Araz was raised to inherit an empire built on shadows. Precise, unflinching, he kills not for power but for “correction.” And yet the one flaw in his silence is Sayra—the woman who should have been his enemy, but instead becomes his fiercest shield. What she does, she does to protect him—even if it means burning herself against forces too vast to fight. Because Faheem Farooqi has arrived. The system’s ghostwriter, he erases the past to secure the future, and he has chosen Araz as his next rewrite. Zibran—the boy who vanished without a trace, returning as a ghost wired into every system. Nations can’t catch him. Families can’t claim him. He does not knock. He enters. And when he enters, empires fall. Loyalties fracture. Ghosts rise. And Sayra must decide how much of herself she is willing to sacrifice to keep Araz alive—when the only way to save him may be to destroy everything else. A gripping literary thriller of power, silence, and inheritance—where protecting the one you love could cost the world itself.