Nox & The Void-Born

Nyra has spent twenty-one years surviving in the Cinder-Slums — the ash-choked shadow community that exists just out of reach of the Sun-Drakes' eternal artificial light. She steals to eat, she moves to stay free, and she does not, under any circumstances, do anything sentimental.

Then she takes the egg.

It should be worthless — a charcoal-grey sphere of dead stone, cold and lightless, the remnant of a dragon species not seen in a thousand years. But when the egg cracks open in a void-energy fissure high on the caldera wall, what pushes out is very much alive: a Shadow-Wyvern with amethyst eyes, an affinity for cold that borders on lethal, and an instant, unbreakable Cinder-Link to Nyra's own newly awakened magic.

She names him Nox. She would rather not have.

Within hours, she is dragged into the palace of Solcarra — the gleaming city built on the Sun-Drakes' magical harvest — and brought before Arion, the kingdom's prince and the last Sun-Drake commander. The Cinder-Link between Nyra and Nox has activated a Tether: a rare bond that locks her and Arion's magic into mutual dependency. Separated, both of them deteriorate. Together, they are more powerful than either should be.

It is, from Nyra's perspective, the worst possible outcome.

What follows is a story about magic and power and the specific, grinding injustice of a system that burns the poor to keep the rich warm — but it is also, stubbornly and in defiance of Nyra's best intentions, a story about the things you cannot calculate: trust between people with every reason not to; the bond between a girl who learned young not to keep things and the creature who chose her anyway; and the difference between surviving and actually living.

Ember & Void is an immersive, character-driven fantasy with a slow-burn romance, an intricate magical system, and a heroine who picks locks first and asks questions later.