Inscribed in Iron and Zephyr

Reaching the Academy was supposed to be the hard part.

Haruto and Ash have spent a lifetime preparing for the Royal Mage Academy of Veyrhold. Separate exams, separate acceptance letters, separate gifts. What neither of them prepared for was surviving it apart.

Placed in different wards, assigned different mentors, and given rooms behind different doors that close at the end of every night, Haruto throws himself into wards, failsafes, and contingency plans. If he can prepare for everything, he tells himself, he will never again fail the people he loves. Ash is chasing a different kind of certainty, the kind that means no one, ever again, has to be the one who saves her.

But Veyrhold has dangers no farmhouse could have taught them to survive: class rankings that turn friends into rivals, a spirit bound inside cold iron that refuses to be commanded, and an arena where control can shatter as easily as trust.

As the walls Haruto builds to keep everyone safe start keeping out the very people holding him together, he has to learn what his parents tried to tell him before it was too late, that being prepared for everything is not the same as being ready for anyone.

The Walls We Build is Book Two of Inscribed in Iron and Zephyr, an isekai fantasy about grief, rivalry, found family, and the different ways two people learn to let themselves be helped.

Read Book One, Ashes of the Valley, first for the full story.