The Thirteenth Cagebreaker
What happens when the academy’s greatest secret starts singing?
A YA romantasy of cages, song, and defiance.
One voice the academy feared. One rune that shouldn’t exist. One girl who’s about to break everything.
About the Book
Sparrow “Roe” Kettler wasn’t supposed to matter.
Scholarship girls from the docks don’t get marked by ancient magic. They don’t change the world. But the Designation Stone chose her anyway—burning an amethyst rune into her palm and making her the thirteenth cagebreaker in Cantara’s history.
The academy says this is an honor. A gift.
But Roe is starting to hear things the academy doesn’t want her to hear. Voices beneath the school. Secrets that have been buried for years. The more she uncovers, the more she realizes: the academy’s greatest lie isn’t what they’ve hidden. It’s what they’ve erased.
As her mother’s disappearance begins to make terrible sense, and her rivalry with Blaise Arcement—the Academy’s brilliant, untouchable heir—ignites into something neither of them can control, Roe has to decide: accept the cage built for her, or risk everything to break it.
Because the worst cages aren’t made of iron. They’re the ones that teach you to stay quiet and call it survival.
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Perfect For Readers Who Love…
ᛇ Dark academia meets found family rebellion
The Atlas Six vibes with Six of Crows heist energy and Sorcery of Thorns atmospheric magic
ᛇ Magic tied to art, music, and emotion
Not just spells—voice magic that can shatter cages or bind souls, culinary enchantments, theatrical illusions, and runes that rewrite fate
ᛇ Forbidden romance where love is a weapon
Enemies-to-lovers tension between Roe and Blaise Arcement—the heir to the very system she’s trying to dismantle. Slow-burn, high-stakes, and inevitable.
ᛇ Class warfare and messy politics
Lower Cantara vs. Upper Cantara: Where you’re born determines whether your magic makes you powerful or disposable
ᛇ Heroines who refuse to shrink
Roe doesn’t play by academy rules—she rewrites them, even when it costs her everything
ᛇ Mysteries that hurt to uncover
The more Roe digs into her mother’s past and the secrets beneath the academy, the more dangerous her questions become.
Book One – Coming 2026
The Thirteenth Cagebreaker is currently in final development. Join the newsletter for cover reveals, chapter previews, and exclusive Cantara Academy lore.
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The World of Cantara
Lower Cantara
Salt air. Rusted metal. Work-worn hands. This is Roe’s home: docks and shanties and sea songs sung too loud, where magic hums under the surface and no one bothers pretending the system is fair. Where voice magic keeps fishermen alive through storms and mothers sing their children through fevers, and power doesn’t need polish to be real.
Upper Cantara
Glass windows. Old money. Silk uniforms and reputations polished to a shine. This is where the people who write the rules live—and where they’re very sure they know who belongs. Where founding families like the Arcements control the Board, and legacy means more than talent ever will.
Cantara Academy
Perched between them, the Academy promises opportunity and integration. On paper, it’s where gifted students from every background can rise through the four pillars of Cantaran magic: music, theater, culinary arts, and glyphs. In reality, it’s a place built to study, sort, and cage what it doesn’t understand—especially magic like Roe’s. And especially those marked by the Designation Stone with runes that threaten the order of things.
The Designation Stone
An ancient obsidian artifact at the heart of Cantara Academy’s opening ceremony. When new students arrive, most receive nothing. Some are sorted by the Stone’s light into their houses—gold for Aurelius, silver for Selenea, ruby for Rubicon, emerald for Verdanian.
But rarely—so rarely that most believe it’s only legend—the Stone chooses differently.
It marks a student with Eihwaz (ᛇ): the rune of transformation, glowing amethyst. The mark of a cagebreaker. The academy claims this is a rare gift, a path to greatness.
No one talks about what happened to the others.
No one talks about why the academy wants to control them so carefully.
No one talks about the voices beneath the school.
Until Roe started listening.
Published by Iron Quill Forge.