What if the answers you’re desperate for could cost you the only people who finally feel like home?

Seventeen-year-old Jake Moonlux is tired of living like a secret. Hiding his magic on the Blank side, surviving a controlling father, and being told “rules” are what matter most.

The problem is… Jake has never been good at rules. If someone draws a line, he’s already deciding how to cross it.

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So when a chance opens to reach Helligdom, Jake grabs it. After all, this is what he wanted his whole life. Helligdom was his dream, the place he knew he belonged.

Helligdom is breathtaking… and brutal. It’s a place where power has politics, trust has a price, and danger doesn’t always announce itself until it’s too late.

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But Jake doesn’t face it alone. Sam Wotcher becomes his first real friend. Sam and Sam’s family show Jake what “home” can feel like, in a way he didn’t realize he’d been craving his whole life.

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And Amelia Ashbourne is something else entirely: sharp, guarded, and impossible to fool. She has the kind of stare that makes lies feel like a hobby you should quit. She challenges Jake at every turn… and still ends up standing beside him when it matters most.

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Whispers of a forbidden ritual, old “accidents,” missing people, and a Council that’s far too practiced at pretending nothing is wrong slip into Jake’s new life, souring his happiness and making him ask the questions he was never meant to ask.

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And somewhere in the shadows, magic has slipped into the wrong hands, born from a mistake that should have stayed buried. Someone is collecting power, testing the island’s defenses, and dreaming bigger than any mage in Helligdom would ever dare.

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As danger closes in, Jake’s rebellion stops being a personality trait and starts becoming a liability… for everyone he’s finally begun to care about, and for the island itself. And the closer Jake gets to the answers, the more it feels like the terror did not follow him in. It was waiting for him.

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Jake came to Helligdom for the truth, but when his own magic turns against him, who will he become to protect the people he can’t afford to lose?