The world had fewer than 100 witches remaining—a rare and dying race.

Witches were often called the sorcerers who devour other sorcerers. Cursed to use forbidden magic, they were incapable of reaching beyond 8th-class mastery. Bereft of social skills, they were doomed to extinction, a fate that had played out over the centuries.

Or so a certain sage had claimed.

What even that sage didn’t know, however, was this: among those witches, one had risen above the rest, breaking through to the 9th class, a level once thought unattainable. This witch began to consolidate and control all the others.

The …