A Forbidden Alchemy

Nina Harrow entered the world as 103 miners were buried alive beneath Scurry, named after the dead canary whose silence warned her father to run.

Nina Harrow entered the world as 103 miners were buried alive beneath Scurry, named after the dead canary whose silence warned her father to run. Fletcher Harrow drank his wages and cursed the Artisans—magic-wielding elites who lived in marble splendor while Crafters like him broke their spines underground. Nina's mother had vanished years before, chasing the bigger life she always promised. At twelve, a scribbled summons arrived: every child born that year was to report to Belavere City for the siphoning ceremony, where a dose of sacred idium would sort them into Artisan or Craftsman. Nina boarded the train clutching her own sketches, determined never to return.

Two twelve-year-olds uncover Belavere's most guarded lie

In the courtyard outside the National Artisan House, Nina collided with a boy from Kenton Hill—pale-eyed, too skinny for his borrowed shirt, with a miner's contempt for everything Artisan. Patrick Colson spat at Lord Tanner's speech and swore his way through small talk, but something about Nina made him persist. When hunger drove him reckless, he pulled her through a side door into the building, down to a cellar stacked with siphoning vials. Two kinds sat on those shelves: wax-sealed vials destined for children pre-selected as Artisans, and unsealed ones that would confirm everyone else as Crafters. They overheard officials confirm the entire ceremony was theater. Patrick pocketed four vials—two of each kind—and pressed the Artisan-marked pair into Nina's trembling palms before his town was called. He kissed her cheek and was gone.

A Crafter girl drinks stolen idium and the earth obeys

Nina peeled the wax from the stolen vial and presented it as her own. The idium tasted of metal, clung cold to her throat. For a moment nothing happened—then the world detonated into color and sensation. Dust spiraled from every crevice in the hall, swirling into a storm that sent children shrieking and officials stumbling from their chairs. When it subsided, the room fell silent around the small pile of earth resting in Nina's palm. They declared her an earth Charmer—the first in over a century. A severe official named Francis Leisel seized her arm, marched her into a corridor, and invented a new identity on the spot: Nina Clarke of Sommerland, orphan niece. She warned that one slipped word would destroy them both. Lord Tanner, meanwhile, sent a letter making clear he already knew everything.

Two Charmers groomed as weapons for an approaching war At the Artisan School, Nina shed her Scurry accent syllable by syllable and learned to pass as highborn while bullies planted worms in…