PROLOGUE
The night Everland’s wards cracked, no one was awake to witness it.
No one except the boy who wasn’t supposed to exist.
Damian ran through the forest at the edge of Everland’s borders, breath ragged, wounds bleeding through torn fabric. Moonlight caught on the silver cuffs around his wrists—ancient restraints carved with runes so old even Everland’s professors no longer recognized them.
Every time his heartbeat spiked, the cuffs tightened.
They were meant to kill him if he used magic.
But the magic inside him was no longer sleeping.
Branches clawed his arms as he stumbled forward, clutching his ribs. Behind him, torches flared—voices from the Shadow Kingdom echoed through the trees.
“Don’t let him reach the academy!”
“He cannot be allowed to cross the wards!”
“If the wards recognize him—everything ends!”
Damian bit down on a groan and pushed himself harder. His vision blurred. The forest shimmered around him as the cuffs heated against his skin, searing warnings into his bones.
“Not yet,” he whispered. “I’m not dying yet.”
The ground trembled as a spell struck behind him, exploding a tree into ash. He threw himself behind a boulder, chest heaving.
The shadows that hunted him were closing in.
He pressed a hand against the glowing cuffs.
They pulsed like a heartbeat—his heartbeat.
If he broke them, he risked unleashing what had been sealed since he was born.
If he didn’t…
He would die before sunrise.
Wind howled through the trees. The torches were getting closer.
Damian closed his eyes.
He hadn’t wanted this.
He hadn’t asked for any of it.
But if he died here, far from the world that had already forgotten his bloodline, then what had his family sacrificed for?
He lifted his hands.
For the first time in eighteen years, he allowed the seal to strain.
Just a little.
The world shuddered.
Sudden silence fell over the forest.
Even the torches behind him flickered.
And far above, Everland Academy—floating among clouds, glowing with centuries-old protection—felt the shift.
The wards surrounding the school pulsed—
Once.
Twice.
Then cracked like breaking glass.
Magic rippled through the sky in a shockwave of cold light, waking every enchanted creature for miles. On the highest tower, the runes dimmed, flickered, and failed for the first time in five centuries.
The entire academy stirred.
The world held its breath.
Damian collapsed to his knees, gasping.
He had done it.
He had reached them.
The Lost Crown bloodline had touched Everland again—and the academy recognized him.
Alarms rang across the kingdom borders. Headmaster Gravemont appeared in a flash of gray magic on the tower balcony, eyes wide with disbelief.
“No…” he whispered. “Not him. Not now.”
The forest behind Damian erupted with shouts.
The hunters had found him.
He forced himself upright, swaying.
Just a little more.
Just far enough.
Just until Everland could no longer ignore his existence.
He stepped forward, crossing the invisible boundary.
The air turned gold.
The wards shattered completely—fragments of light raining like stars.
And Everland Academy, the oldest magical institution in the world, opened its gates to the impossible.
To the boy with no aura.
To the heir who should have died.
To the threat the kingdoms had buried.
Damian.
He took one last breath before darkness swallowed his vision.
And the world of magic woke screaming.
