The Malevolent Nine

With the Great Crusade between the Celestines and the Infernals finally over, mercenary mages and megalomaniacal warlords have gone back to business as usual: fighting for wealth, territory and just to beat the snot out of the other guys because, hey, it's more fun than a real job, right? But every spell creates a momentary breach between the mortal realm and those whose physical laws make magic possible. Until now, those breaches healed over time, but with the veil between realities left in tatters by the Great Crusade, every conjuration and invocation now worsens the rifts.

The solution is simple: limit the amount of spells being cast so that the mortal realm will heal itself. But mages aren't good at sharing, and the threat of losing their powers triggers a frantic mystical arms race before their connections to the realms of magic fade entirely.

Now, Cade Ombra, former Glorian Justiciar and current guy-sick-to-death-of-saving-the-world, is forced to reunite his infamous crew of war mages known as the Malevolent Seven in a last-ditch effort to eliminate the threat of every single living spellcaster - including themselves. But can seven emotionally unstable wonderists protect the entire mortal realm from rogue bands of avaricious wizards, previously unimaginable horrors creeping through the veil, and their own dark impulses?

As the mortal realm teeters on the edge of destruction, Cade and his crew must decide how far they are willing to go to defend a world that may not be worth living in.