Elira Rialle should never have been admitted to Vespera Collegium. She has no noble blood, no patron, and no official record of the strange magic she has hidden since childhood. Yet a black-wax sealed letter summons her to the empire's most dangerous magical academy - and someone powerful has made certain she cannot refuse. Inside Vespera's cold stone halls, Elira is watched, tested, and quietly marked as something the institution has been waiting for. Her magic reacts to forbidden bone-white relics, sealed chambers, and the death-touched currents buried beneath the school. Then she meets Caelen Vey Ashkar: cursed prince, secret protector, and the one person who knows her admission was no accident. Their bargain is simple. He keeps her hidden. She tells him what her magic reveals. But Vespera has swallowed students like her before, and the deeper Elira searches, the clearer it becomes that the academy is built over something ancient - something breathing beneath the stone. And it already knows her name.