The Twenty-Ninth Aspect

Eight years of training to stand beside someone. Then the world hands you yourself.

Neferkar was meant to stand beside a hero. Not to be one.

He spent his life training to be an ally, advocate, and advisor for a lost soul from a world he has never set foot on: someone from the mysterious world of Earth.

There have been many such souls, since long before Neferkar was born. His own world calls these people Aspects, and they arrive through the same Wellspring pools that grant sorcery to the realm.

He knows Aspects can never go home. He knows what saves them, what breaks them - and what they have saved and have broken. All have been ordinary people, pressed into the shapes of heroes and monsters and oddities.

He thought he understood their stories better than anyone else.

On the day Neferkar meant to welcome the twenty-ninth Aspect, the Wellspring chose him instead.

Now he must learn the difference between the support role he was intended for and the heroic one that many are eager to define for him.

Twenty-eight souls were summoned before him, each with their own gifts and choices. Neferkar stands now where they once stood, deciding what the role means with no destiny attached.

What to Expect

- A local protagonist with principles, flaws, and care.
- Slow-burn politics, character drama, and trickster-folk-hero elements.
- Animal shapeshifting powers
- A gay male protagonist, very slow to relevance, but nonetheless relevant.
- Mostly platonic relationships. Some romance-related subplot elements, mostly in later volumes.

What Not to Expect

- Protagonist ruthlessness, treating people as pure tools or assets
- Harem. 
- Isekai parody or genre mockery.

Updated Monday, Wednesday, Friday.
Chapters are 2k-3k in length.