Michael Turner has just discovered two things about himself.

He is a mage.

And he may possess more raw magical power than anyone who has ever lived.

Unfortunately, power is not Michael’s problem. Control is.

His magic responds to thought, emotion, instinct, and intent, often without requiring a formal spell. When Michael tries to do something simple, the magic usually understands exactly what he wants—it just has absolutely no sense of proportion. A small flame can become an inferno. Lifting something can launch it through a ceiling. Trying to repair the damage afterward may create something even more extraordinary than what he destroyed.

Michael enrolls at the Rutherford Institute of Magic, a respected modern academy where mages learn to control their abilities before taking on the dangerous work society depends on them to perform. In a world where mundanes often regard mages as a necessary evil, an uncontrolled mage of Michael’s unprecedented power is both fascinating and terrifying.

Rutherford pairs him with Lena Hart, the academy’s finest student. Lena has plenty of power of her own, but her true gift is precision: the ability to make magic do exactly what she intends and nothing more. Confident, competitive, mischievous, and fascinated by Michael, she becomes his partner in training, experiments, and increasingly dangerous field missions. Once she knows nobody is seriously hurt, she also finds his spectacular failures much funnier than she probably should.

Michael does not need to become stronger. He already has more power than he knows what to do with.

He has to learn how to use less.

Train at Rutherford, survive magical disasters, take on dangerous missions, make friends and rivals, explore a world where magic and modern life coexist, and discover what develops between Michael and the woman who may understand his magic better than anyone else.

The hard part isn’t having power. It’s knowing when enough is enough. #oc2026