Wellspring
For a thousand years the world has been dying so slowly no one noticed. Magic is a faint, gatekept craft; the past was greater than the present, and everyone has made peace with the long decline, never knowing it was a choice. Once there was a true source of all magic, and it sealed itself away to keep a hungry darkness from ever reaching it, freezing the world and dooming its own makers to fade. Now the seal is failing. Strange things wash up on the western shores; the powerful manoeuvre over a board they don't realise is about to tip; and four hidden powers begin a quiet war over a single question: should the way to the source be opened, kept shut by a lie, or guarded by the few who know the truth?
Caleb is a dockside nobody hiding a strangeness he believes is sickness, the living ember of a magic the world thinks extinct, and the one person who can reach the source without being corrupted by the darkness that wants it too. Sera is a noble daughter of the faithful north, raised to revere the lost age; she will discover she has misunderstood her whole life. As one learns he was made to believe he was no one and the other learns everything she was certain of is a lie, they are drawn together from opposite ends of a breaking world, hunted by those who would use them, hide them, or destroy them. To save everything, they will have to sail west, off the edge of every map, toward the truth the world sealed away, and decide whether some things are better left buried.