LookItIsNotMe
Elara, a scholarship student scraping by at the Citadel of Aethelgard, has a talent for conjuring illusions - intricate, shimmering deceptions dismissed as parlor tricks by the more prestigious elemental mages. She lives in the shadow of her late father, a disgraced scholar whose heretical theories about "resonance magic" led to his expulsion.
When a seemingly random energy surge rips through Aethelgard, leaving a trail of petrified students, Elara's latent abilities awaken in a terrifying, uncontrolled burst. She sees fragments of a future ravaged by shadows, a landscape mirroring whispers from her father's forbidden texts.
Simultaneously, whispers circulate of the Obsidian King's return. Not a melodramatic dark lord indulging in world domination fantasies, but a being of pure entropy, a cosmic parasite that consumes worlds from the inside out, twisting their ecosystems and civilizations into hollow, echoing parodies. He feeds on stagnation, on the unyielding grip of tradition, on the calcified heart of Aethelgard itself.