For Luc, life began seven years ago. It began on a bus, by the hills, beneath a black sky, with no one at his side but his sister, Cora.
His world is mundane, routine, and perfectly adequate. At work, he teaches, and at home, he takes care of Cora, who has spent the last four years in perpetual lethargy, from no apparent cause. And at night, sometimes, Luc sleepwalks. He finds himself inextricably drawn to the green hills by his home, guarded by strange trees, where a bench waits and a mysterious man wanders. And, if he can believe it, a door opens into a hill.
Summer is always a dream, but this summer, Cora's disappearance is anything but. With half of his world gone, Luc begins a search that plunges him down into a land beyond the hills, where time is infinite, trees are immortal, and a neverending cycle seeks a sacrifice Luc may not be willing to give.
FORMER TITLE: Élan: A Youngblood World
"Beware that you become not the very monster you ought to slay."
In a world where magic holds the essence to life, there is still no telling where fate determines your place will be.
When the Cardinal Empire of Nyrhaea and its time-forsaken creatures declare war on the human world, an immortal dark entity in the guise of a human, a grieving swordsman, an electric-manipulating technocrat, an unhinged fire-breathing boy, and a magic-less girl whose very existence defies the Laws of Mahika, venture to stop the prophecied, apocalyptic world war. All the while dealing with the complications of entering adulthood.
With the grotesque inside him growing hungrier by the day, threatening him of the looming hour to fulfill destiny's bidding to be the key to the end of the world--where death is an impossible remedy to attain--the entity resorts to a mysterious girl who could only be his last hope to achieve freedom from the shackles of fate. An antidote given not without an undefined price. But how long can he endure to bury the roots of the calling past?
And what are they willing to risk to liberate a cruel world beyond saving that hangs in the state of trust and sanity?
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Contains Mature Contents: gore, violence, and subtle depictions of abuse, substance use, and suicide.
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