Between the Seen

Magic fills the world Eve grew up in. People use it to bake bread, sharpen knives, light their hearths. It's ordinary. Unremarkable. Safe. Eve has never found it safe. For as long as she can remember, every act of magic summons something — a presence that nobody else sees, that writhes and watches from the edges of the people casting. She doesn't know what they are. She doesn't know why only she can see them. She knows only that they terrify her, and that the safest thing she can do is never look directly at anyone at all. Growing up in a quiet orphanage on the edge of Durnwell, Eve has built a careful, narrow life around that rule. It isn't much of a life. But it's survivable. Until it isn't.