The Split Sigil

By Unsprouted Bean

Every soul carries a Sigil. But when a Sigil shatters in two, the darkness returns to reclaim what is missing. America, 1890s. Beneath the dazzling veneer of the Gaslight and Steam Era lies a ruthless magical order policed by the Federal Government. Deep in the snow-capped mountains of Vermont, at the ancient Thornwick Academy, every mage bears a gleaming Soul Sigil upon their wrist—the definitive proof of their power and very existence. But magic always exacts a price. When a soul suffers unimaginable trauma, the Doppel phenomenon occurs: an outburst of wrathful magic splits off a perfect duplicate. The alter ego possesses every memory, the exact same face, and equal magical power, yet embodies the host’s darkest, most suppressed desires. And according to the Rule of Unity, both cannot coexist for more than one hundred days. When the Night of the One Hundredth Day falls under a total solar eclipse, one of them will vanish forever. Mara Ashgrove is a rational, resilient scholar leading a quiet life, haunted only by a blank memory from her fourteen-year-old self and the silver-blue snowflake Sigil carved onto her wrist. That is, until the Night of Coming-of-Age. Magic ruptures, and Mara is shoved off the bell tower by her own duplicate. Waking in the freezing snow, she learns to her horror that the alter ego—a seductive, flamboyant, and wildly ambitious woman named Vesper—has seamlessly stepped into her life, stealing her name, her friends, and her standing. Mara is left an invisible ghost, stripped of everything in her own existence. Crueler still, Federal magic law dictates: if the true self cannot be identified, both will be sealed permanently into the subterranean dungeons beneath the mountain. Callum Rooke, Captain of the Magic Oversight Squad, possesses Soul-Sight—the rare ability to discern the truest luminescence of a person's soul. Cold, disciplined, and weighed down by the dark secrets of his past, his sole directive is to hunt down and execute Doppels. To reclaim her identity and survive before her physical form completely fades away, Mara has no choice but to assume a false identity, thrusting herself into the role of assistant to Rooke himself—the very man deployed to hunt her. But how can she expose the imposter when her own body is slowly dissolving into dust? And what happens when the only man with the authority to sentence her holds the key to the horrific memories of her fourteen-year-old self—the very traumatic moment that tore her soul in two? A high-stakes game of survival. A fading true self. A radiant imposter. And a hundred-day curse. A chilling, gripping Dark Academia Romantasy crafted for fans of mind games, enemies-to-lovers, and the haunting, snowbound atmosphere of New England.