PROLOGUE
Before the war between the humans and the supernaturals, Eldryn was a shared land.
Humans, werewolves, vampires, and mages lived divided by borders, bound by trade, and held together by a fragile peace that relied more on restraint than trust.
This era would later be named the Age of Concord—a time when power remained balanced, but never stable.
That balance did not last.
Driven by greed for magic-rich lands, the human kingdoms waged war against the supernaturals.
It was not a war of conquest.
It was a war of ruin.
Forests burned into ashfields. Rivers abandoned their paths. Entire cities vanished so completely their names were erased from history.
Magic was no longer controlled, it was unleashed, and Eldryn began to die.
Faced with annihilation, the supernatural races did what they had never done before— they abandoned centuries of hatred. And UNITED.
Together, they ended the war and when the dust settled, humanity was no longer a power.
To prevent another destruction, they forged Aetherion, a unified kingdom ruled by a single sovereign, its regions divided and controlled to preserve what remained of Eldryn. Peace endured, but it was enforced through law, memory, and fear.
Under this new order, humans fell to the lowest caste, pushed to the edges of the kingdom and stripped of influence.
And from the ashes of war rose an institution meant to ensure that the rightful man ruled over all the kingdom.
It is called the DOMINION.
Every generation, the strongest heirs of the dominions were sent into the Dominion to fight for the throne.
Humans, powerless and expendable, were never meant to compete. Yet even systems built to control destiny are not immune to fracture.
Among the dominions, entering the academy was known as a proving ground. Among the humans, getting into the Academy meant something else: hope, a chance at marriage into dominion blood, an escape from poverty.
For Sephyra Dorne, it is neither hope nor ambition. It is a hunt and she is not entering to survive. She is entering to find her parents' murderer and make him bleed.