SEROTINY

To save her sister, she burned her world. Now, she must walk into the fire to keep from doing it again.

Exiled from Veridian Deep, Kaelia is a paradox: an elf born with fire instead of her people's life-giving water. For ten years, she has lived as a mercenary in the grey slums of Blackstone Reach, terrified of the inferno raging beneath her skin, a power that once saved her family but reduced her ancestral home to ash.

Desperate for a cure, Kaelia ventures into the Volcanic Scars, a wasteland of poison gas and molten rock. Rumour speaks of the Cinder Heart, an ancient artefact hidden within Mount Ignis's caldera, said to grant dominion over the elements. She believes it is the leash she needs to bind her magic forever.

Guided by Jarek, a cynical scavenger who knows the deadly terrain better than anyone, Kaelia must navigate a landscape where the air turns lungs to cement and the ground melts boots. But as bandits, mercenaries, and magma constructs close in, Kaelia realises that surviving the climb will require more than just a leash.

To claim the Heart, she must stop fighting the monster inside her and learn to become the forge.