Chapter 1

Adam Cronwell, seventeen and struggling to breathe in his too-small bed, sat up fast enough to crack his head on the low ceiling of the attic room. The plaster flaked onto his pillow. He rubbed the sore spot and blinked at the dusty morning light leaking through a single grimy window.

“Time for what?” he whispered, but the voice didn’t answer. It never did after it spoke.

He swung his legs over the edge of the mattress. His bare feet. touched cold linoleum. In the room below, his mother was already rattling pots in the kitchen, and the smell of cheap coffee crept up the stairs. Adam pulled on his faded jeans and a t-shirt that was once blue but now a tired gray. He caught a glimpse of himself in the splintered mirror propped against the wall: black hair, stringy and unwashed; a soft round face; and the belly that strained against his shirt. He didn’t look like anyone special.

But the voice said otherwise.

The first time it had spoken, three nights ago, he’d thought he was losing his mind. Now he was starting to think it was the only real thing in his life.

His mother called up, “Adam! You’re gonna be late for your shift at the garage!”

“Coming,” he said, his voice flat.

Breakfast was a slice of toast and a glass of water. His mother was already halfway out the door for her cleaning job, and his younger sister was still asleep on the couch. Adam ate alone, feeling the weight of another gray day.

But the voice didn’t leave.

It returned as he washed his plate: a soft pressure behind his eyes, a sense of direction. He closed his eyes and saw—no, felt—a path leading away from the house, toward the old wood shed at the edge of the yard. The shed had been locked for years, ever since his father left.

Something was waiting for him there.

The want was immediate and sharp: he had to go. The complication was his mother’s expectation, his sister’s need, the boss who would fire him if he was late. But the call from that voice was stronger than any of it.

Adam grabbed the key from the hook by the back door—the one his mother said was lost—and slipped outside.

Weeds brushed his ankles as he crossed the yard. The shed door was solid wood, painted brown but peeling. The key turned in the lock with a click that felt like permission.

Inside, dust motes swam in a shaft of light. An old workbench, empty jars, rusted tools. And on the floor, a circle of faintly glowing powder arranged like a ring.

Adam knelt. The powder was silver, like crushed moonlight. He touched it with his fingertip, and a jolt ran up his arm—not painful, but alive.

The voice returned: “You were born in two worlds, Adam Cronwell. In one, you wear this body of hardship. In the other, your true form waits. This is the threshold. Cross it, and you will awaken.”

He didn’t hesitate. He stepped into the circle.

The world twisted.

His skin tingled, then burned. His clothes ripped along the seams as his body stretched and hardened. He felt his jaw widen, felt a surge of heat in his gut, felt his hair change from black to platinum. When the sensation stopped, he was on his hands and knees, breathing hard, but the floor was no longer wood—it was polished marble.

He raised his head. The shed was gone. He was in a grand hall with high arched windows, sunlight pouring through stained glass that showed a tree with golden leaves. And his hands—they were strong, lean, with long fingers and a faint shimmer. He looked down at his body: a flat stomach, muscled chest, and clean clothes that had simply appeared: a white tunic and dark trousers.

A voice behind him, not inside his head but real, said, “Welcome home, Prince Adam.”

He turned. A tall figure stood there, wings folded behind him—vast, white, luminous. The face was ageless and calm, eyes like pools of clear water.

“I am Gabriel,” the angel said. “Your guardian. Grandmother has sent me to guide you. You have awakened in your true form.”

Adam opened his mouth, but no words came. He touched his own hair—smooth, silky, platinum—then his jaw, hard and defined.

“This is real?”

“As real as your other world,” Gabriel said. “And far more urgent. The other six princes are awakening. There is little time before Grandmother’s call goes out. But first, you must learn what you are.”

The door at the far end of the hall swung open, and a woman stepped through. She was tall and elegant, with silver-streaked dark hair, and her eyes held the same warm light as the voice.

She smiled. “Adam. I am Eve. Your family’s matriarch also I'm your mother. Welcome to the wizard world.”

The circle of powder on the marble floor behind him began to glow again, brighter this time, as if it had more to show.

Adam looked from Eve to Gabriel, then back to the glowing circle. A choice pressed on him: step back into his mortal life, or step forward into a world he had never known but which already felt like home.

But before he could decide, the powder in the circle flared white-hot, and a shape began to form within it—a silhouette of a man, taller than Gabriel, with crown-like horns of light rising from his head.

Eve’s smile faded. “That is not supposed to happen yet,” she said.

Gabriel moved between Adam and the circle, his sword appearing in his hand as if it had been there all along. “Stay behind me, Adam.”

The silhouette turned, and two eyes of molten silver fixed on Adam.