Wrenholt Academy has twelve weeks to prove it deserves to keep existing. Owen Merrick has twelve weeks to prove the same thing about himself.
A hidden magical Britain has kept its schools quiet for six centuries. Wrenholt is the oldest and, right now, the most likely to be shut down: no invested keeper in sixty years, a governing body that measures schools like assets, and a rich rival academy waiting to inherit its charter the moment it fails inspection.
Enter Owen Merrick: laid-off stonemason, third generation in a trade he thought his family had left behind, and the only person willing to answer a dead man's job posting. His grandfather kept this school alive for six decades without ever claiming the title. Owen picks up the trowel, and the school's ancient keystone picks him right back, binding him as its first Wardmason in a generation.
Now he restores stairwells, kitchens, and an ancient bell tower with his own two hands, wakes a sarcastic magical survey-ledger that has been alone far too long, and earns the trust of a staffroom and forty-one children who have learned not to hope for rescue. Every honest repair heals the school. Every custom kept buys it another day. Nothing here can be bought, only earned.
Midwinter is coming. So is the worst tide of forgetting the school has faced in a century. And so is the inspector who can end it all with a signature.
A hidden magical Britain has kept its schools quiet for six centuries. Wrenholt is the oldest and, right now, the most likely to be shut down: no invested keeper in sixty years, a governing body that measures schools like assets, and a rich rival academy waiting to inherit its charter the moment it fails inspection.
Enter Owen Merrick: laid-off stonemason, third generation in a trade he thought his family had left behind, and the only person willing to answer a dead man's job posting. His grandfather kept this school alive for six decades without ever claiming the title. Owen picks up the trowel, and the school's ancient keystone picks him right back, binding him as its first Wardmason in a generation.
Now he restores stairwells, kitchens, and an ancient bell tower with his own two hands, wakes a sarcastic magical survey-ledger that has been alone far too long, and earns the trust of a staffroom and forty-one children who have learned not to hope for rescue. Every honest repair heals the school. Every custom kept buys it another day. Nothing here can be bought, only earned.
Midwinter is coming. So is the worst tide of forgetting the school has faced in a century. And so is the inspector who can end it all with a signature.
- An original hidden-magical-Britain boarding school setting, built from scratch
Cozy LitRPG restoration progression: one shared stat, the Ward, fed by honest work
A grown, competent protagonist: no chosen one, no romance subplot
Found family, dry humor, and a ticking clock that never lets up
Genre: GameLit
Used availability for Lina Will's Wardmason