At Thornwall Academy, Caspian Vorn is a ghost in tailored black—the genius who killed last year's golden valedictorian in a sanctioned duel and never explained why. Now you're his laboratory partner for the year. No one warned you. Everyone is watching.

The assignment should have been routine. Paired research is a fourth-year tradition, nothing more. But nothing about Caspian Vorn is routine. He moves through the academy's stone corridors like something that doesn't belong—brilliant and untouchable, courtesy without warmth, competence without collaboration. His isolation is absolute.

And now it extends to you.

Association carries a cost. Whispers follow you through the halls. Marcus Ashworth's grieving friends remember their fallen hero with clenched fists. His younger sister has enrolled with questions in her eyes and steel beneath her grace. Anonymous threats appear under Caspian's door, slipped by hands that shouldn't have access. Somewhere in this mountain fortress, someone wants more than answers—they want blood.

Yet proximity reveals what distance cannot. The exhaustion he can't quite hide. The watchfulness that never fades. The weight of something unspoken behind those smoke-grey eyes. Caspian isn't what the academy believes him to be. But what he is remains locked behind walls built to withstand siege.

Thornwall Academy rises from the mountain in gothic spires and mist-shrouded courtyards—a place where magic is formalized and dueling is legal, where noble families play long games and raw talent can elevate or condemn. Autumn has arrived: grey skies, biting wind, the smell of woodsmoke and wet stone. The perfect season for secrets to surface.

The dead valedictorian's allies want justice. Powerful families want leverage. Caspian wants only to survive his final year. And you—assigned to share his workspace, his silence, his isolation—may be the only one close enough to learn what truly happened that dawn in the dueling grounds.

Whether that truth is worth the cost of knowing remains to be seen.