The Ember of Aldermarsh
Beneath the salt-lamp glow of his family's cellar, Wren Tarrow charts a world the academy would rather keep buried. When a junior student turns up murdered and his older sister Eda vanishes into the custody of compromised proctors, Wren's quiet life among unsorted charts shatters. Drawn into the orbit of Professor Halvor Quill, the reckless conspirator Pim Drestle, and the grieving scholar Ineka Volk, he begins to unravel a conspiracy older than the academy itself, one guarded by Headmaster Ystral, haunted by a hooded silver-thread woman, and twisted through a former friend, Vaela, now a living corpse bound to a dead lord's will. As Wren peels back each layer, he discovers that the murder was only the surface wound, and that his sister stands at the heart of a coming war between noble houses and the institution that once promised them safety. To save Eda, Wren must betray the only home he has ever known, choosing whether the truth of Aldermarsh dies in silence, or rises with him in the ashes.