Vanessa Hale 
The Whispering Spire [EPUB ebook] 
A Song of Silent Roots

In the steel-choked city of Lornith, ambition clashes with ancient power. Queen Erythra, haunted by famine, erects the Whispering Spire, a monument to human ingenuity, but each rivet driven into the earth is a wound in the slumbering earth goddess, Sylvanna.  Black rivers flow, unnatural twilight descends, and the city cracks under the weight of its hubris.
Kael Torvin, a young engineer, marvels at the spire’s potential, yet hears a dissonant whisper in the wind, a forgotten harmony. Guided by crumbling tablets echoing the Song of Silent Roots and aided by his sister Elara, a botanist chronicling Lornith’s decay, Kael unearths a forgotten lore: the Heartwood Conduit, a mythical tree binding earth and sky, and the Chromatic Dust, scattered fragments of the goddess’s power.  Their quest leads them through forgotten tunnels beneath the city, where they confront a monstrous embodiment of unchecked progress.
Meanwhile, Erythra, blinded by her past, sees Elara’s knowledge as a threat, imprisoning her within the opulent palace walls. But within those walls, Elara uncovers Erythra’s tragic past, revealing not a villain but a woman driven by fear.
As the spire pierces the heavens, tearing a rift between earth and sky, Kael must choose: embrace the city’s gleaming promise or heed the earth’s desperate plea.  Sylvanna awakens, torn between vengeance and mercy.  And Erythra, confronted by the crumbling consequences of her ambition and touched by an unexpected empathy, faces her own reckoning.
The Whispering Spire isn’t a battle of titans but a poignant exploration of trauma, ambition, and the delicate balance between progress and preservation.  Can roots and steel intertwine, or will the city’s ambition shatter the earth’s song forever?