Dauntless

Tier 1 of the Abyssal is supposed to be safe. The System Church prints it on pamphlets. Kaelen Tor, a sixteen-year-old [Scavenger] who cannot quite pay for his sister’s Clarity Tincture, knows the spiders have already outgrown the catalogue. A fight he should not win wakes the Dread Engine: a forbidden class that turns fear into strength and broadcasts Dissonant mana the Inquisition’s hounds are built to find. Hiding in Oakhaven means a suppression anchor, an aura test, and Inquisitor Malakor’s black-eyed Harmony Lens. The path runs through a scholar’s secret, a mutated truth, a master’s sacrifice, an unlikely alliance, and the siege of Oakhaven—monster versus monster, heretic versus Church—until the ashes of Harmony and a path that does not lead back to scavenging.