They said she was special. That she had a bright future. It wasn't a lie, but they didn't say that was necessarily a good thing.

Clara Cassidy was a C student just trying to get by in life. Nothing had worked out as she planned and now she spent her days without purpose or attachments. All of that changed suddenly when an elderly woman knocked on her door. 'Magic is real,' the woman insisted and offered her a spot at Crossedlake University, a school for rising stars in the casting world. Clara didn't buy it. Not until she accidentally touched the woman's staff and her world exploded into a vibrant display of golden runes.

The next morning, she opened her front door and was shocked to see something besides the bland hallways of her apartment complex; she found castle walls and dozens of people rushing through the corridors in cloaks and robes. Before panic could set in, a fellow student named Corbin took her under his wing and showed her the ropes of Crossedlake. The scent of damp earth and an otherworldly chill hung in the air around him. It put Clara on edge, especially when she found out why the other students kept their distance from him, but he seemed nice enough.

Clara quickly finds out that there's a lot more to the world than she ever dreamed. Dangerous magic, mind-readers, terrifying creatures, and fantastic creations wander the planet in secrecy, and now she was a part of it. Luckily, some of the oddities out there wanted to be friends with her, and she ended up in a motley crew of people that felt like family to her.

A place that started to feel like home and a family that cared for her. It was all she had ever wanted and now she had it, but something still wasn't right. Mysteries surrounding her acceptance into the school ate away at her as a strange feeling crept into her mind. The feeling that something sinister had targeted her. That something not from this plane of existence was stalking her through the halls.

She might not be wrong.