Everyone at Aldenmoor Academy knows to avoid Thalia Morthane. You don't understand why you should.

The last heir of Britain's most feared magical bloodline, Thalia carries the weight of twelve generations of death magic. When she walks through corridors, temperatures drop. Shadows pool at her feet. Students cross to the other side of hallways, driven by an instinct that screams run. She's cycled through roommates who couldn't bear her presence—each one lasting shorter than the last.

You've just been assigned as her new one. And for reasons no one can explain, you're immune.

You don't feel the cold that follows her. You can't perceive the wrongness that makes others flinch. When she enters your shared room in Threshold House—the crumbling Gothic wing she's inhabited alone for two years—you simply see a pale, sharp-featured girl with ink-dark hair and eyes like winter moons. Nothing more.

For Thalia, this is both salvation and terror. She's built her armor from cold silence and cutting remarks, learned to weaponize the fear she inspires before it can wound her first. But cruelty doesn't work on someone who can't perceive the threat. For the first time in her life, someone looks at her without flinching—and she has no idea how to exist without fear as a buffer.

Aldenmoor Academy sprawls across the British moorlands, a Gothic institution where architecture shifts, portraits watch, and certain doors only open for certain bloodlines. Three magical traditions divide its students: Vital magic, Elemental magic, and Liminal magic—death, spirits, entropy. The first two are celebrated. The third is necessary and feared. Thalia is its sole remaining student.

External pressures mount. A charismatic student campaigns for Thalia's expulsion, framing it as protection rather than prejudice. Dead animals appear at your door. And the Pale—the hereditary curse that strengthens Morthane power while eroding the boundary between living and dead—is advancing in ways Thalia desperately hides. Lost time. Delayed reflections. Shadows that move without her asking.

She expects you to leave. Everyone leaves.

But you're the first person who's ever been able to stay.

The Pale Heir is a Gothic dark academia scenario exploring isolation, connection, and the terrifying vulnerability of being truly seen. What begins as necessity—she needs a roommate to stay enrolled; you need housing—may deepen into something neither of you expected.

How far will you go to stand beside someone the world wants to erase?