A raw, indignant shout cut through the oppressive air on the main deck, a futile protest against the new, brutal arithmetic governing their lives. “This is an outrage! A dozen of them? Just a dozen filthy sailors, and they demand we kill five of our own each day?”The speaker, a sorcerer’s apprentice with more passion than sense, slammed his steel blade into the weathered deck planks with a loud thud. The wood splintered under the force, a testament to his strength, but the display earned him mostly scornful glances. The sailors who had delivered the ultimatum were long gone; this was a performance for an audience of his terrified peers, a show of bravado when the real threat had departed.Despite their disdain, the nearly four hundred apprentices instinctively clustered together, a fractured and panicked mass united only by a common enemy. In their hearts, each one clung to a deep-seated sense of superiority. They were apprentices of the arcane, touc

The air on the foredeck was thick with a tension that had become as familiar as the salt spray. Lafey arrived last, her presence a cold current in the stifling atmosphere. Her expression was, as ever, an impenetrable mask of frost."Lafey. We've been waiting. Sit here."The invitation came from a handsome apprentice named Byron, whose overly large scholar's robes failed to hide a calculated posture. His smile was warm, almost tender, and it seemed to have a dizzying effect on a young woman sitting beside him. He possessed the same striking, magnetic beauty as Lafey.Lafey ignored him completely. She dropped unceremoniously onto a bare patch of deck well away from him, the elegance of her features at odds with her dismissive posture. She fixed the smirking apprentice with a glacial stare. "Do I know you?"The young man's charming smile vanished, replaced by a cold sneer. "You... The rumors are true. You have a viper's tongue.""Seeking death?" Lafey

For thirty days, an uneasy truce had held between the sailors and the apprentices aboard the sea-worn vessel. Igden, the sailors' leader, had maintained this peace through sheer force of intimidation, but he never allowed himself to relax his vigilance. He understood the brutal arithmetic of their situation all too well.While his men, all trained fighters with knight-level combat skills, currently held the advantage over these magic-less apprentices, Igden knew this was temporary. A chilling certainty haunted him: once these apprentices truly learned sorcery, they would be able to kill any knight with effortless ease. Their potential was limitless, a fact every apprentice understood instinctively.Men like Igden, even if they miraculously advanced to become legendary knights, would ultimately only ever serve powerful Sorcerers, begging for scraps of greater power. Hadn't the legendary knight Baron, and now their own Boatswain, both become servants to great Sorcerers?

The vessel that had carried Grimm and the other apprentices was painfully conspicuous in the foreign port for one simple reason: it was a wreck. Battered from its ordeal with a Sorcerer and a nightmarish giant octopus, the fact it had remained afloat at all was a minor miracle.As the ship finally docked, a wave of apprentices nearly stampeded onto solid ground, gulping down the air with deep, relieved breaths. Elation was plain on every face. They had escaped their floating hell.This display of raw relief drew scornful glances from other apprentices moving through the port. "Another batch of backwater island hicks," one sneered, his voice carrying. "They think just setting foot on the Sorcerer's Continent makes them Sorcerers. Pathetically ignorant."He’d mistaken their joy for arrival euphoria, not understanding it was born of survival."Master," many apprentices in the port murmured, bowing their heads as the Faceless Mask Sorcerer passed. He ig

Blackstone Spire Academy occupied a remote corner of the Sorcerer’s Continent. To the east lay the vast, mysterious expanse of the mainland, blocked by the treacherous Briarwood Forest. To the west stretched the Endless Ocean, specifically a region known as the Gemstone Sea, separated from the academy by the formidable Blackstone Mountains. This geography made Blackstone Spire a relatively isolated institution.Of course, these "barriers" of forest and mountain were only relevant to apprentice-level Sorcerers. For a full-fledged Sorcerer capable of flight, they were little more than minor inconveniences.After half a month, Grimm had finally managed to explore the entirety of the academy's grounds, piecing together its layout. The eponymous Blackstone Spire was the undeniable core, but for most apprentices, only its lower seven floors were accessible. The upper hundred levels remained shrouded in absolute secrecy, reserved for the most powerful Sorcerers.Beyond the spire, three primar