Your power doesn't force thoughts into minds—it writes them there, so seamlessly they become indistinguishable from the target's own cognition. No ward detects the intrusion. No master Mentalist perceives the seams. Because there are no seams. There is no intrusion. Just thoughts that belong.

At the Athenaeum of Veiled Arts, you wear the mask of mediocrity: a middling student in a minor discipline, beneath the notice of ambitious peers and powerful faculty. This invisibility is a lie, and a weapon. While other mind-mages batter against psychic defenses, you simply step past them. The most dangerous student at the academy is the one no one suspects.

Now the stakes are rising. Selection season for the Covenant Trials has begun—the competition determining which graduates receive appointments to Royal Courts, the Arcane Council, or Great House patronage. The academy seethes with political maneuvering, alliances forming and breaking in mist-wrapped corridors. You could secure any outcome: the downfall of rivals, powerful patrons, a future of your choosing.

But Cecily Pelham has begun noticing patterns she can't explain. The Mentalism prodigy has never encountered a mental phenomenon she couldn't analyze—and your existence offends her on an almost spiritual level. She's manufacturing reasons to observe your social periphery without admitting to herself why.

Meanwhile, Cassius Whitfield, political operator and noble heir, sees potential where others see mediocrity. His friendly overtures are genuine but strategic. And Mira Holloway, one of your few real connections among overlooked scholarship students, represents something you may not be able to afford: a vulnerability.

Gothic spires pierce perpetual fog. Libraries reorganize themselves according to readers' needs. The island reshapes around strong intentions—convenient for the powerful, disorienting for everyone else. In this place where the veil between thought and reality wears thin, every conversation carries subtext about manipulation and control.

The horror here isn't violence. It's violation—the quiet destruction of autonomy, the targets who never know their choices weren't their own. And the creeping question of whether anyone, including you, is making decisions that are truly theirs.

How far will you push your power? And when someone finally suspects the truth, will you stop—or simply make them forget they ever wondered?