Void-Veins

The Spire promises salvation. It promises power. It's lying. Kael Torren is a scavenger from the Rust, the slums beneath the glittering Academy where mages learn to harness the Artery—the planet's flow of pure mana. He's survived seventeen years by staying invisible, scraping together credits for his dying mother's medicine. Then the Assessment reveals his secret: Kael isn't a fire-thrower or an earth-shaker. He's a Void mage. A mistake. A glitch in reality that erases instead of creates. The Ministry wants him dead. The Academy wants him weaponized. And Kael just wants to survive long enough to uncover the truth his father died protecting—that the Spire doesn't train students. It harvests them. Armed with a power that hungers for existence itself, a team of misfits, and his father's cryptic journal, Kael must navigate a school where the final exam is measured in souls. The world runs on magic. But magic runs on people. And Kael is about to break the machine.