Awakened Darkness

Cut off from the world by a flesh-eating fog, Malory Whitcliff has a habit of falling for the monsters that hunt the humans in her rural Midwestern town. After being unwillingly sent off to a school for monster hunters, Mal is everything her priest adoptive father hates... and is proud of it. 

At the beginning of her school years, she longs to escape Saint Michael’s School for Holy Daywalkers and reunite with her secret monster best friend. But the memory of her childhood friend fades as she develops a crush on both her out-of-bounds combat instructor and her uninterested roommate, and she's not so sure she wants to leave anymore. After all, how great can life outside be if families are more than willing to let their children be taken by strangers?

But when students on her campus start dying in gruesome ways, Mal suspects that there's more to her teacher—and herself—than she first thought... and the outside world will no longer be held back.

For fans of the paranormal dark academia setting of the Vampire Academy series and the vibes of Bad Omen’s Death of a Peace of Mind album and the angst of Tokyo Ghoul, Awakened Darkness is an Adult dark fantasy that is at its core a story about finding comfort in places you really, really shouldn’t and the monsters we make ourselves into.

Cover designed and illustrated by Andie Lugtu.

The content notice goes as follows: manipulation, parental and familial abuse and neglect, bullying, ableism, eugenics discussed in past dialogue, Westernized Christian-related trauma (see: a cult based on Orthodox, Catholic, and Baptist teachings), body horror, gore, violence, death of a partner and child via miscarriage referenced in dialogue, vampirism, various mental illnesses (see: Bipolar Disorder, depression, anxiety, suicide ideation, self-harming tendencies), homophobia, sexual scenarios (see: consensual, dubious consent, and unprotected sex), sexual assault mentioned in dialogue and on-page in prologue, sexism, age-difference, toxic power imbalances, mass child-kidnapping, kink (see: blood play, choking, hematolagnia/paraphilia, CNC), and cursing.