The Youngling part one: Synesthesia
Two worlds divided. A girl about to fall between them.
Born under extraordinary circumstances and shaped by forces she doesn’t yet understand, Synesthesia never makes it to the academy where her life was meant to begin. Travelling with Bron, chased by secrets older than her world, and crossing paths with the strange creature known as the Griffinkat, she soon finds herself drawn toward the cracks between worlds — and the shadow waiting within them
The Youngling: Synesthesia begins long before Syn learns who she is.
The story opens with Griffinkat and Lady Vestra — a flight, a fall, and a birth that should never have happened the way it did. Synesthesia grows up in the shadow of that moment, gifted with a sensitivity neither she nor the people raising her fully understand.
When the time comes for Syn to leave for the academy, her journey is derailed before it even begins. She takes Bron with her, hoping for adventure, safety, or at least direction — but what she finds is a forest that is not what it seems, a creature who is both guide and enigma, and Ellis, whose path crosses hers at exactly the wrong (or perhaps the right) moment.
As Syn moves deeper into the Midgarden, cracks appear in the fabric of what she believes the world to be. There are seams — thin, dangerous places between realms. Something stirs there, something hungry. And when the shadow creature finally strikes, Syn is wounded in a way that changes everything.
In freeing the creature, she also unleashes it — and its infection spreads to Garrity, a moment that will echo disastrously through the trilogy.
By the end of Book One, Syn is torn from her world entirely. She crosses into the Manheim — lost, wounded, and alone — while Seth discovers he has been crossing between worlds without realising it, and Octavian feels the first hairline fracture in a faith that once held him firm.
Book One is a story of beginnings: a childhood shaped by destiny, a journey cut short, and the dangerous promise of what lies between worlds