by Serafim
Safety is a lie fed to the fire. For centuries, the Calvarian Ward has hummed beneath the obsidian halls of the academy. To the world, it is the ultimate shield, a holy wall keeping the darkness at bay. To the Headmaster, it is a necessary evil, demanding a tithe in the blood of the innocent to function. They are both wrong. The Ward is not a shield. It is a siphon. It does not burn the souls fed to it, it hoards them. It is a battery centuries in the making, drinking the magic of the youth to reach a critical mass. And it is almost full. As the "Winter Gale" descends, painting the realm in silence and snow, a traitorous professor flees into the night carrying the secret that could shatter the kingdom. Her path converges with the broken: a Commander haunted by the past, a Warlord’s Daughter hunting her maker, and a Wanderer marked by a debt to the Void. They are strangers, united only by the storm. But they must find a way to stop the machine before the charge is complete. When the sky turns the color of fever and the Ward begins to fail, the history it was meant to bury wakes up. The Advent Wrath has returned, and the only thing standing between humanity and the silence of the Void are the few souls who have nothing left to lose.
