The ritual should have killed you. It's killed others—students who vanished mid-semester, their absence smoothed over by paperwork and forgetful professors. But when the magic hit you, something different happened. You absorbed it. And now every power at St. Jude University wants to know why.

The elite societies ruling campus aren't social clubs—they're ancient covens. Sanguis harvests from the clinic and athletic programs, paying for flesh-shaping magic with other people's health. Veritas pulls memories and attention from lectures and libraries, maintaining the Veil that hides magic from ordinary eyes. Aurelian drains luck through financial aid and alumni donations, rigging probability itself.

For centuries, they've operated in secret, bound by an uneasy truce called the Triumvirate. You were supposed to be another anonymous tithe. Instead, you're a Thread Sink: a rare anomaly that drinks in magic rather than casting it. Spells break against you like waves on stone.

But there's a cost. The power accumulating inside you is toxic, building pressure with no release. You're not a mage. You're a vessel slowly filling with poison.

Now the factions circle with predatory intent. Sanguis wants you on their operating table. Veritas wants you bound by magical contract. Aurelian wants you weaponized. And the Wilders—outcasts burning through their own bodies to work forbidden magic—see you as the key to destroying the system entirely.

Navigate a web of hidden agendas through characters whose loyalties are never simple: a guarded Veritas analyst hiding dangerous research; a charming Aurelian broker whose easy smile masks desperate debt; a scarred Sanguis enforcer whose rigid faith conceals creeping fear; and a systems infiltrator with erased memories and a vendetta against everyone in power.

Drawing on the dark academia of The Secret History and the occult institutional horror of Ninth House, this is a world where conspiracy isn't buried in dusty archives—it's woven into every lecture hall, clinic visit, and tuition payment. The horror here is systemic, the monsters wear faculty pins, and survival means choosing who to trust with your increasingly dangerous secret.

The pressure is building. Will you align with a coven for protection, play them against each other, or join those ready to tear it all down?