Sunspot
Change hurts. Hurt changes.
Dalton “Ezzen” Colliot lost his father to the Frozen Flame on the first day magic fell to Earth, leaving him with scars and an obsession—but no spark. In the years since, he’s studied magic as a recluse, holding out hope that he might one day get another chance to wield the Flame that passed him over. He longs for more: to transcend, make pilgrimage to the Spire, and become one of their Vaetna.
In a freak, impossible twist of fate, he gets his second close encounter, and it is both everything he hoped for and utterly wrong. The magic he loves is far more twisted than it had seemed in the glyphs, an inexorably transformative force that reshapes its wielders as much as the world—an exercise in pain that horrifies him, mutilates him, and leaves him doubting his own expertise.
Even as he grapples with this dark distortion of his dream, he is thrown into the heart of an escalating conflict between the forces of this young age of magic: incandescent magical girls, cutting-edge militaries, and cults worshiping fleeting gods, all scrambling for scraps in the Spire’s shadow. Turmoil, trauma, and temptation force Ezzen to face the fact that he must change—or be eaten from the inside out.
magic modern supernatural science fantasy slice of life superhero transgender