the crack whore

The stone went out from under his foot. No sound, no dust, only a hollow where the step had been, and a cold behind his breastbone that never left. Wick Tanner is eleven and small for his age, and his hands are already going brown from the tan-pits. He was born in the Reek, the tannery slums at the bottom of the hill, and he was never meant to be anything more than his father. A tanner. Downwind of the city and downstream of it, beneath the notice of the grey academy tower that has stood over his whole life. Then he carries a load of hides up to Karthal. Four academy boys corner him on a stair in the dark, and the world stops being there under his foot. He falls. The boys look once at the hole that nothing could have made, and they run. It is not magic. Magic shapes the world. Whatever woke in Wick unmakes it. The scholars of Karthal spend their lives pulling the world apart to learn how it was built, and they would pull him apart the same way to learn how he is broken. They are not the only ones who would come looking. Older things have been waiting a long time for a power like his. So a tanner's boy who cannot control what he is and cannot hide it begins the one climb that keeps him alive. He goes up, out of the Reek, staying a step ahead of everyone who wants to cage him or cut him open. He does not know what woke in him on that stair. By the time he understands it, putting it back will no longer be a choice he has. A slow-burn progression fantasy. A weak-to-strong underdog in a grounded world where power is licensed, ranked, and rationed, and the lowborn get none of it. Magic that has to be earned, not handed over on a system screen. Close third person, and a mystery that widens with every arc.