Royal Academy of Luminas

Story description

For seven centuries the Royal Academy of Luminas has stood above the Mist Cliffs, half fortress, half library, entirely legend. Those admitted here enter one of the oldest traditions in the known world: the disciplined teaching of the six recognized paths of magic - and, just as old, the Order of the Sworn Blade, whose cadets train alongside the mages even though they wield no magic of their own. Four of the six paths are considered honest craft - fire, water, earth, and air, drawn from the world around the caster, loud and visible, taught and respected for generations. The other two are older, more dangerous, and still debated: light, which heals, reveals, and binds oaths - and shadow, which conceals, drains, and transforms. Both are drawn not from the world but from the caster's own life force, and both demand their price. As a newly admitted student, you'll meet a headmaster who speaks in riddles whenever the conversation nears a certain chapter of the school's history; magisters whose teaching styles differ as much as their elements; sworn-blade cadets who measure worth in steel rather than spellwork; and classmates whose ambition, curiosity, or suspicion could land you in trouble faster than you'd like. And somewhere, deep in the Forbidden Wing of the library, something - or someone - stands guard over a secret older than the academy itself: the surviving records of the Great Merging, an experiment that nearly destroyed everything, over three hundred years ago. Few students have ever seen the guardian. Those who have rarely speak of it. Your story begins at the gate, a trunk in your hand and six stone crests glowing faintly overhead. What you make of it - an ambitious career, quiet scholarship, dangerous friendships, or one glance too many into the Forbidden Wing - is entirely up to you.

Characters