He scored a 41 out of 500. On purpose.
Kael Daren could have aced the Ironveil Academy entrance exam. Instead he buried his score, accepted his placement in the disgraced Class F, and started planning.
Because Kael didn’t come to the most powerful academy in the country to learn. He came because something is wrong beneath it — something that has been ascending through the bedrock for centuries, and no one above ground knows it exists.
Armed with a hidden artifact that lets him manipulate the academy’s Merit System, Kael builds his resources in secret. He recruits allies who don’t know they’re being recruited. He constructs a bunker no one knows about. And he pieces together the truth buried in a pre-Velthar city sealed beneath the academy’s foundations: a six-hundred-year-old threat is approaching the surface, the sealing protocol is failing, and the only person positioned to stop it is a Class F dropout with a score of forty-one.
Staying invisible gets harder when Class F keeps winning things they’re not supposed to win.
A dark, fast-paced progression fantasy featuring:
• A hyper-intelligent protagonist who only fights when he’s already won
• A Merit-based power system with real economic stakes
• Hidden dungeons, ancient secrets, and ruthless academy politics
• A slow-burn found family built from the academy’s rejects • Escalation from classroom schemes to world-altering consequences
