Dawnshipper

Devvyn has no house, no name worth mentioning, and no stake in the game that runs the world. Which suits him fine. In Thaloria, staying beneath notice is how people like him survive.

Mana runs everything here — dug from the earth, refined, and burned through city lights, airships, rail lines, guns. The great houses grew fat on it for generations, carving up the wells between them.

The wells are running dry.

Now the old deals are collapsing, desperate new bargains are being struck in back rooms, and every one of them drags the houses a step closer to a war none of them can afford. They all know it. None of them will be the first to blink.

Devvyn was never meant to be part of any of it. Raised by an inventor in the Lower City, he's spent his life on the outside looking in. But a dying stranger just pressed a book into his hands — one that people are willing to kill for — and something old, buried for a reason, is stirring beneath the cracks of the world.

The houses fight over mana. Whatever chose Devvyn wants something else entirely.