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Preview from chapter one
Chapter 1. Night
Miya Lancaster.
The Kingdom of Veindor. The Human Academy of Magic. This was the quarter where less affluent mages and students who could not afford private lodgings usually lived. Magic was a constant presence here—someone was always practicing illusions, while someone else was trying to brew potions on a windowsill. But what was happening in one of those attic rooms today went far beyond any ordinary bit of student mischief.
Warm, almost tangible gold from the candlelight lazily spread into the corners of the dim room, picking out the spines of ancient grimoires and the heavy, looming shadows cast by the furniture. On the floor, drawn in ritual charcoal and sealed with the fresh blood of a five-toed mountain starling, a flawless summoning circle pulsed with power. The geometry of its lines hummed with the magic woven into them, straining beneath some colossal pressure from beyond.
Incredible. She had actually done it.
Miya stood frozen, scarcely daring to breathe. Her eyes widened with a wild, intoxicating mixture of ecstasy and soul-chilling terror as darkness began to gather at the center of the circle, violently tearing through the very fabric of space. The spell had worked without a single flaw. She—a mere low-ranking student who had dared to steal a forbidden high-level summoning scroll right out from under the masters' noses—had accomplished the impossible.
When she was a child, her father, a mage of no great strength who had never risen beyond the rank of apprentice, took her every year to the Academy's founding festival. Amid the noisy crowds and brilliant displays of magic, mages and sorcerers, as well as the Academy's students, performed all manner of wonders, turning water into wine, the living into the inanimate and back again, and summoning terrifying demons.
Holding her father's hand tightly, Miya would watch with breathless fascination and just a hint of fear, dreaming that one day she would stand there herself and command the true, living darkness of the Abyss! Later, as she grew older, she learned that most of those demons were nothing more than expertly crafted phantoms, but the childhood dream had already sunk its roots too deeply into her. She swore that one day she would summon a real demon and become the greatest sorceress of her age. And now, at last, it seemed that her childhood ambitions were taking physical form before her very eyes.
The darkness within the circle dispersed, and the demon fully materialized.