Description

Thalia Night has always lived on the margins. She was always too strange for the quiet village of Eldenmere but too restless to stay. Her mother was a rumored hedge witch who died when Thalia was nine, leaving behind only whispers and a single frayed shirt that Thalia refuses to part with. She was raised by an uncle who grieves in silence and a town that watches her with wary eyes. Thalia always knew she didn’t belong there.

One day a letter arrived with no postage and a seal no one dares speak of, Thalia was offered a place at the Academy. An ancient and secretive school carved into the bones of a forgotten mountain range. The Academy does not answer to the Dominion or its twelve ruling Houses. It answers to something older.

Leaving her home behind, Thalia decides to board a mysterious train that appears without sound and travels beyond the edge of every known map. She comes to the Academy which is not what it seems. Its spires cast long shadows, and its stone halls echo with the footsteps of those who came before.

Here all knowledge is powerful, but it is never free. The students are brilliant, strange, and guarded. The instructors speak in riddles and Thalia begins to suspect that she wasn’t chosen just for what she is but for what she might become.

As secrets unfurl like vines through the Academy’s walls, Thalia must decide what she's willing to lose in exchange for the truth… and whether some doors should remain unopened.