by Olvin
Thirteen-year-old Rorik grew up in a traveling circus, surrounded by acrobats, animal tamers, and fire-eaters. His childhood smells of sawdust and smoke, and his first lessons in magic come not from professors but from performers who cannot begin to understand what this boy does with flame. When his father sells him for fifty gold coins to the stern mage Ignis, Rorik finds himself within the walls of Arkheim Academy. Runes of bondage are burned into his neck, and hatred blazes in his heart. Ahead of him lie years of training, street brawls, political conspiracies, and battles against creatures rising from the Abyss. By his side stands a handful of outcasts just like him: a thief, an alchemist, and a quiet archive servant with the eyes of a kingslayer. This is the story of how an abandoned child becomes a captain of the free skies. A story about the difference between power that burns and power that protects. About the price of freedom that cannot be bought but only forged within oneself through fire and pain. And about how sometimes a father throws his son into the flames so that the filth of the gutter will never consume him.
