Adriella
The guardian angel who knows Adam before he knows himself.
Adam is ten years old when Adriella first enters his life.
He cannot possibly understand who she is.
Perhaps no human ever could.
He discovers she is his Guardian Angel.
Ethereal, compassionate and touched by a power beyond the visible world, Adriella dwells inside a small glass sphere. She has been entrusted with an extraordinary task: to watch over a lonely boy growing up in a civilization that has forgotten what it means to be fully human.
Her first gift to Adam is the Key to the Wind, which she implants in his being.
Through it, a world that has vanished begins opening inside him. Literature. Music. Art. History. Human achievement. Human failure. Love. Courage. Imagination. Adam comes to know what humanity once was – even though almost none of it remains in the sterile world surrounding him.
But all of this is both a gift and a curse, one that Adriella fully understands.
What happens when you give a young man all knowledge of a purpose filled human past while leaving him trapped in a world without human purpose?
Adriella knows the answer may destroy him.
She remains near Adam as the years pass, sometimes unseen, sometimes appearing when he needs her most. She does not live his life for him. She cannot make his choices. And she cannot spare him every wound.
That is not the purpose of a guardian.
When Adam's despair finally overwhelms him, at the age of twenty, Adriella becomes the first glimmer of something he had almost stopped believing existed:
Another possibility.
Her connection to Adam eventually reaches far beyond Novana. She joins forces with Malaika, her friend from the heavens, and guides Adam's journey to Taoland. She appears at moments of crisis, transformation and loss – often when her ward has reached his limits.
Yet for all her extraordinary powers, Adriella's greatest gift may be remarkably simple.
She never gives up on Adam.
Not when he loses hope.
Not when he loses his way.
Not even when Adam himself forgets the person he might someday become.
Adriella cannot tell him why he is here.
She can only keep opening doors.
Adam must decide whether to walk through them