WasabiMarie
The voice in my head is violent, constant, and it has never let me die.
Until the night it went silent.
I sleep in a cheap bell tent behind a Florida dive bar. Work double shifts. Wash blood off my knuckles in a creek. Trust no one. My pointed ears stay hidden under cheap dye-a relic of past trauma I can't afford to remember. My past is my enemy. The only thing I trust is the voice: a brutal whisper that has kept me alive through things that should have killed me.
I don't know why the voice has always been there.
Then the voice stops.
And I wake up in a world that shouldn't exist.
A realm of bloodthirsty beings and skies that never clear. A place that feels like it's been waiting for me, and that's the most terrifying part.
I don't know why I'm here. I don't believe it's real. Magic, dragons, monsters-things I only read about. And I don't understand why a place soaked in death feels more like home than Florida ever did.
But one thing becomes clear fast:
I have no magic. No training. No allies.
And everyone-the students, the masters, the creatures in the dark-wants me dead. Every single day, I risk my life just by breathing.
Except him and his band of traitors.
He has black hair, black eyes, a blade strapped to his back. He tells me to stay away. Then he shows up again. Watches me like I'm a puzzle he can't solve-and a fire he can't stop touching.
He says he doesn't trust me. But trust has nothing to do with why he follows me into the dark.
I don't know what I am. I only know I'm not leaving.
Not until I find out who or what I was made to be.
And not until I decide whether the boy with the black eyes is my ruin? Or the only weapon I need.