Halo: Primordium - Book Two Of The Forerunner Saga

A long time ago, I was a living, breathing human being. I went mad. I
served my enemies. They became my only friends. Since then, I’ve traveled
back and forth across this galaxy, and out to the spaces between galaxies--
a greater reach than any human before me. You have asked me to tell you
about that time. Since you are the last true Reclaimer, I must obey. Are
you recording? Good. Because my memory is failing rapidly. I doubt I’ll be
able to finish the story. Once, on my birth-world, a world I knew as Erde-
Tyrene, and which now is called Earth, my name was Chakas... In the wake of
apparent self-destruction of the Forerunner empire, two humans--Chakas and
Riser--are like flotsam washed up on very strange shores indeed. Captured
by the Master Builder, misplaced during a furious battle in space, they now
find themselves on an inverted world where horizons rise into the sky, and
where humans of all kinds are trapped in a perilous cycle of horror and
neglect. For they have become both research animals and strategic pawns in
a cosmic game whose madness knows no end--a game of ancient vengeance
between the powers who seeded the galaxy with life, and the Forerunners who
expect to inherit their sacred Mantle of duty to all living things. In the
company of a young girl and an old man, Chakas begins an epic journey
across a lost and damaged Halo in search of a way home, an explanation for
the warrior spirits rising up within, and for the Librarian’s tampering
with human destiny. This journey will take them into the Palace of Pain,
the domain of a powerful and monstrous intelligence who claims to be the
Last Precursor, and who now has control of both this Halo and the fate of
Forerunners and Humans alike. Called the Captive by Forerunners, and the
Primordial by ancient human warriors, this intelligence has taken charge
of, and retasked, the Master Builder’s cruel researches into the Flood--
which it may have itself unleashed on the galaxy more than ten thousand
years before.