Nether Born

The Forest of the Dead does not welcome the living.

Behind its tree line, a boy tends a garden. He grows tomatoes. He talks to the dead like they're family.

Because they are.

A Death Knight taught him to fight. A skeletal Priestess mends his scrapes with holy light no Church can explain. An elder lich called "The Professor" gives advice three centuries out of date and never once stops giving it. They raised him. They love him. They are the only family Lienso has ever known — and the gentlest thing about him.

Because the boy who grows tomatoes is also the reason nothing worse has ever crossed that border. The kingdom just doesn't know it yet.

So when the Kingdom of Raging Water finds the monster on its edge is a seventeen-year-old with no social skills — one who sheltered their lost princess when she wandered into his forest — the King makes an impossible offer: attend the Royal Mage Knight Academy. Live among the living.

Now Lienso must survive something far worse than the Nether. Classmates. Formal dining. A purple-eyed rival who won't stop watching him. And, on the border, an empire moving toward war — with no idea what's been living in the woods this whole time.

He would rather be left alone with his tomatoes.

But some things don't stay buried. And Lienso has always had a hobby.

He hunts Dark Mages.