Ink LitRPG · Time is the currency
A Titan's Core
On Kindle Unlimited, checked July 28, 2026The tower pays its winners in immortality and bills everyone else in years. Joe just wants his memories to survive the climb.
Joe Grant is having the worst day a gamer can have: his homemade AI has accidentally committed bank fraud, the federal agents are at the door, and the antique shop he ducks into turns out to be the kind where the shopkeeper warns you that immortality is a curse. He dies anyway. A glowing blue book swallows him, an old game box floats up out of the dark and asks whether he would laugh in the face of death, and when he says yes, a voice he will come to know very well answers: good luck, chump.
The other side of that yes is the tower. It is alive, it is enormous, and it is a prison dressed as a game. Every floor is a whole world with its own monsters and its own rules, climbers carry belts of glass orbs with living creatures curled inside them, and the arenas take bets the way this place takes everything: in years of your life. Dying costs time. Forgetting costs more, because the tower quietly eats the memories of the person you used to be unless you fight to keep them.
What keeps the climb warm is the company. Joe finds his old friends reborn as new people, one of them now a wisecracking little lizard fellow with an unpronounceable name, and the flame-blue passenger sharing his head turns out to grieve as hard as he jokes. Readers of a certain famous dungeon crawl will feel at home in the mix of running jokes and real stakes. Better still, this story finished its full run as a serial before coming to Kindle, so the whole trilogy is already written and the wait between books will be short.
Reading order
Prices shown were fetched at build time and can change. As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases.
Read A Titan's Core free for 30 days
Kindle Unlimited
Borrow this series and over 4 million other ebooks. New members get a 30-day free trial, then $11.99/month. Auto-renews, cancel anytime.
Start the Kindle Unlimited trialAudible
Prefer audiobooks? An Audible Premium Plus trial includes 1 free audiobook credit for 30 days, then $14.95/month. Auto-renews, cancel anytime.
Start the Audible trialTrial offers are for eligible new members. As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases and memberships.
Is it on Kindle Unlimited?
Yes, checked on release day, August 25, 2026. The Kindle buy box shows Read for Free under Unlimited reading, alongside the $5.99 buy price. A 30-day free trial for eligible new members, then $11.99 a month, auto-renews, cancel anytime.
Rise is out now
Rise is the first book of A Titan's Core, the tower climbing trilogy from the writing duo of Aoife Wai and Rachel A. Cooper. It released on Kindle and joined Kindle Unlimited on August 25, 2026, with paperback and hardcover editions sold through the authors' small press. The entire trilogy already exists in finished serial form, so this is one of those rare new series where the sequels are a matter of schedule rather than hope.
No audiobook yet, but the authors have said an Audible edition is planned for later this year. Our read along for Rise is gathering readers now and opens September 14, 2026, which is exactly enough time to finish the book with company instead of ahead of it.
The Forum
Talk about A Titan's Core with other readers in the official halls. Every board says right on the door how far its spoilers go, so pick the one that matches your bookmark.
- The A Titan's Core Hall Anything goes, just say which book before you spoil it
- Book 1: Rise Spoilers through Book 1 only
- Theories & Speculation All books, spoilers wide open
Fan Art Wall
The wall is bare so far. Reader art for A Titan's Core will hang here; yours could be first.
Add your art
Everything here is reader-made and approved by a human before it appears. Your own work only; we honor takedowns (see /dmca).
The Book 1 climb, in four scenes
Studio concept art for this shelf. The titles trace the climb without giving the game away.
The audiobook angle
There is no audiobook yet. The authors have said Rise is coming to Audible later this year, and this shelf will grow an audio section the day that happens. Until then the tower is a Kindle and paperback climb.