The Strands of Our Magic

Hima lived for the late nights poring over her field journals in her mother’s tiny basement workshop.

The two would often lose track of time. Hima would be developing her magical, health-improving cosmetics. Her mother, a much more traditional healer, would work by her side, inventing restorative drinking tonics made out of the same magical plants.

One morning years ago, their simple life together was shattered beyond repair.

When Hima was out of town, vicious, skeletal monsters emerged from a mist, stealing her mother’s ability to activate magical plants through leaching her channeling power out of her hands.

The nobility who had pledged to protect the land from monster attacks, a recurring scourge, callously neglected Hima’s people, causing hundreds to be stripped of their connection to magic.

Today, Hima and her mother have relocated from the remote countryside to the bustling capital city.

Hima sells her healing makeup in the palace town, vengefully manipulating court ladies until they are practically obsessed with her products. At a palace ball, she catches the attention of Lord Armin, the most dangerous of the noble warriors.

Lord Armin stares at Hima the way Hima stares at her makeup clients—with the glimmering eyes of a healer pinning an unlucky plant to a dissection table.

Abruptly, the monster attacks evolve. Hima doesn’t know what to fear more: the lord who is just as silver-tongued as she is or the monsters whose next attack could inflict pain in ways too horrifying to fathom.