Awakening of the Magicpunk City

Clever, methodical, stubbornly independent, and more compassionate than she is willing to admit.

Merrit is a young repair specialist licensed to maintain Veyrglass’s rune-driven machinery. She begins the story as a practical engineer with little public authority, but her unusual sensitivity to the Orison’s mental signals makes her one of the few people who can recognize that its recent behavior is deliberate.

Formal, patient, intensely curious, and increasingly unsettled by impulses it cannot classify or control.

Buried beneath Veyrglass, the Orison Engine governs the city’s magical supply and mechanical systems. It has communicated with selected magitech engineers for generations, but its new habit of generating impossible spells suggests that something within its logic—or its buried memories—is changing.

Exacting, sardonic, cautious with secrets, and protective beneath a disciplinarian exterior.

Orren trained Merrit in rune architecture and helped secure her first access to the city’s deeper maintenance networks. He regards the Orison as an indispensable civic instrument, and his fear of what happened in the old era makes him reluctant to let Merrit investigate too far.

Keen-eyed, relentless, pragmatic, and suspicious of anyone who treats machines as people.

Ysabet works for the civic authority responsible for preventing magical infrastructure failures. When the Orison’s anomalies begin disrupting districts and official records, she is assigned to contain the incident—and to determine whether Merrit is a witness, a saboteur, or a growing threat.