Shadows of the Academy

Blackwood Academy does not teach magic.
It teaches survival.

Sixteen-year-old Elara has learned the most important lesson of all: stay invisible. At Blackwood, strength is currency, cruelty is routine, and the weak are punished publicly to remind everyone else where they stand. Trials are mandatory. Food is earned. Mercy does not exist.

Elara survives by watching instead of acting?by noticing the smallest shifts in posture, tone, and silence. While others fight for dominance, she learns the patterns that govern the Academy's violence. She scavenges. She hides. She endures.

Until the Academy notices her.

As surveillance tightens and the trials grow more brutal, Elara realizes Blackwood isn't just a school?it's a controlled system designed to break, shape, and weaponize its students. And she is no longer just another shadow slipping through its halls. Someone is watching her closely. Testing her. Teaching her how the game is really played.

Kai is not like the others. He does not compete. He does not threaten. He observes?calm, calculating, and dangerously intelligent. Through him, Elara begins to understand that power at Blackwood isn't about brute force. It's about positioning. Pressure. Knowing when to disappear?and when to move.

But insight comes at a cost.

To survive, Elara must step out of the shadows she's relied on her entire life. She must decide whether dignity is worth the risk of visibility, and whether understanding the system means becoming part of it. Because Blackwood does not reward rebellion.

It consumes it.

Shadows of the Academy is a dark, psychological fantasy about survival under constant surveillance, the quiet brutality of institutions, and the dangerous knowledge that seeing the truth can be just as deadly as ignorance.