The Last Mender

Blacklisted for refusing to forge provenance for a collector's stolen artifacts, genius restorer Ethan Cole takes the job no one else dares to take: a $20,000-a-night watch at the museum. On his first shift, he instinctively repairs a broken war-god statue—and a burst of golden light obliterates the demon strangling his coworker. Ethan is a born "Mender": every artifact he restores makes him stronger. Drafted by the demon-hunting Fuyao Division, he awakens six divine powers, rising from night-guard laughingstock to buy out the very collector who ruined him. But every artifact in the museum is a lock sealing an ancient evil below—and each step of his growth turns the key for a fallen predecessor who has waited twenty years. On the night the six powers finally merge, Ethan realizes: from the moment he took the job, he was the pawn his enemy had been waiting twenty years to move.