Young Writers Society

There’s a special rule on Lastic: if your eyes don’t start glowing on the eve of your tenth birthday, you’re condemned. The kingdom’s soldiers take you away - and no one knows where they go. Some think the kids are killed. Others think that the kids become the next generation of soldiers. After all, you can never see their eyes past their visors. Others still think the children are hidden away in forgotten camps and forced to become Lastic’s next powerhouse.

Elem is twelve.

His eyes didn’t glow on his tenth birthday. His parents tried to pretend they did. But the kingdom can’t be so easily tricked, and Elem’s picture perfect family was torn apart by the aftermath. Now he’s been wandering from town to town in search of something. He’s not exactly sure what. Rumors say that if you can find someone who was there before the condemning, they can protect you from the kingdom’s desperate men. Elem doesn’t believe it until he stumbles into a town tucked into the cliffside - a town that houses one of the few people seemingly untouched by the kingdom’s all-seeing, glowing eyes.

But the man doesn’t want an apprentice. Desperate for protection and knowing that the kingdom is on his metaphorical doorstep, Elem has to turn to the most dangerous person in all of Lastic: Blight, a former soldier who’s never seen without his visor and has been on the top of Lastic’s wanted list for years. Blight wants Elem for the same reason everyone else does. In a kingdom where people’s eyes glow, the most magical people of all are the ones whose eyes will never get a special shine.

And Elem is a ticking time bomb of powerful, primordial magic.

This isn't really clear from the story's description, but this book will 100% be a found family story where Blight realizes that he's now a weird mix between a father figure and an older brother. In between trying to deal with the whole all-powerful kingdom plot, the two will have plenty of cute bonding moments where Blight is a horrible influence on Elem.

I got really excited about Elem and Blight last night, so I decided to make the two of them using two different Picrews! Blight was made using this one, while Elem was made using this one.

Blight doesn't look exactly like what he would look like in the book because there wasn't a visor option, but I really like what I came up with for him.



I'm also pretty content with how Elem came out, since it was difficult finding a Picrew that captured his age but also didn't make him look too young. I think the chibi style in this one might have made him look a little too young, but I love his haircut and the other little details I was able to give him.