When I was nine, I watched my mother die holding the world together.The Veil tore open.A hand came through, the color of wet stone.And the woman who had taught me every binding word could not chant fast enough to close it.My name is Clara Halswell, and I built my whole life on a lie.I told everyone I passed my trials.I told everyone I am a Duskwarden, keeper of the boundary between worlds, the way my mother was before the rupture took her.I am not.I carry a borrowed blade and a crescent scar on my palm, and twice a year, when the Veil thins, I walk out to the standing stones and pray the boundary holds without me.It has held.Until now.Because something on the other side is awake.It presses against the Veil like a horse with too many legs, and the cracks are spreading faster than any warden in living memory has ever seen.A naturalist asks questions no outsider should know to ask.A whisperer offers me a truce, and names a debt I cannot pay.And at the bottom of the mine, below an altar of broken oaths, I find the thing every Duskwarden was sworn to keep buried.Then the dragon speaks, and offers me a bargain."Bind the Veil. Seal the Veil. Watch the Veil."I know the words by heart.I never learned the power behind them.To save the only home I have ever known, I will have to stop pretending — and claim a power I was never meant to hold, the kind that judges carved into law and called forbidden.The mercy I need, I will not earn.I will have to steal it.And the face behind the rupture that killed my mother is one I am terrified to recognize.The Duskwarden is an immersive, melancholic epic fantasy about forbidden magic, a dragon's bargain, a lost heir, buried secrets, and a reluctant guardian who must become the legend she only pretended to be.Perfect for readers who love epic fantasy, morally grey magic, dragon bonds, a fierce flawed heroine, ancient prophecies, and richly built worlds with high emotional stakes. An immersive standalone fantasy.