The Codex of Starfall (Unlocking Great Power)
"You're F-Rank, Lyra. You shouldn't even be here. You're a waste of space and resources."
Those words came from Kael Vantris—her childhood best friend, the boy she'd loved since they were kids—right before he and her stepsister Celeste publicly humiliated her at the Academy's Ranking Ceremony, revealing that her admission was a "charity case" bought by her adoptive family to make themselves look benevolent.
In the world of Celestian Academy, your magical rank is everything. It determines your classes, your resources, your future, your worth. Lyra Ashford, an F-Rank mage with barely enough power to light a candle, has spent three years being the academy's punching bag—bullied, isolated, and watching the boy she loved fall for her perfect stepsister.
When Celeste and Kael frame Lyra for stealing a professor's research (research they actually stole to sell to a rival faction), Lyra is hours away from expulsion and arrest. With nothing left to lose, she breaks into the forbidden Echoing Library—a place students whisper about, where ancient magic and alien technology intertwine, where those who enter never return.
Desperate for anything that might prove her innocence, Lyra accidentally triggers a hidden chamber and discovers a mysterious holographic map—The Codex of Starfall—an ancient artifact left by the Starborn civilization. But she's not alone. The map activates only in the presence of multiple "resonance signatures," pulling in four other students who were in the library at the wrong (or right) time.
Among them: Zain Korathi, the academy's ice-cold SSS-Rank prodigy, a devastatingly powerful mage with a tragic past who's never looked at anyone twice—until now. He's the one person who doesn't dismiss her, and for some reason the Codex identifies her F-Rank signature as "Primary Keybearer—Starborn Heir."
The map reveals something world-shattering: the Starborn didn't go extinct. They're sleeping, waiting for the right people to wake them and restore balance to a galaxy where magic and technology have been deliberately separated by those in power. The journey will require the group to travel through ancient portals, face trials that force them to level up their abilities, and uncover a conspiracy that goes straight to the top of the academy—and beyond.
But as the team ventures deeper into the mystery, Lyra discovers the truth: she's not F-Rank at all. Her power was artificially suppressed as a child because she carries Starborn DNA—a bloodline the galactic council has been hunting and eliminating for centuries. They wanted her weak, controllable, forgotten.
And Zain, the genius prodigy everyone fears? He's been searching for the Codex his entire life because his family was destroyed by the same conspiracy. As he watches Lyra's true power awaken—brilliant, fierce, and absolutely breathtaking—the boy who never let anyone close finds himself falling for the girl everyone called worthless.
They tried to keep her powerless. Now she'll show them what happens when you awaken a sleeping star.
