Communio

Every family passes something down. Assunta's gave her indifference and duty.

In early twentieth-century Italy, Assunta's future is being decided by the people who claim to know what is best for her. As war scatters her family, silence and decisions made in the name of love leave an inheritance of their own.

In her world, the Gift is real. No one knows where it came from. Its earliest traces reach back thousands of years, passed down through a rare and fragile line of inheritance. Those born with it are called Numinants: stronger, faster, more resilient than other people, and regarded with both reverence and fear.

They have always lived among us. They have fought our wars, worked in our cities, and built their own rules within ours. Some were worshipped. A few shaped the history we know. Most were used.

Their bodies can draw energy from the world around them and release it in other forms. But their power obeys the same laws as everything else. Nothing comes from nothing, and every inheritance needs someone to bear its weight.

Even ordinary pleasures come at a cost. Hunger alone cannot make freshly baked bread nourish a body that cannot use it. Wealth cannot change what that body needs. The Gift takes before it gives.

Communio is a historical fantasy about the search for belonging, the choices parents make for their children, and the lives those children must build within them.

In a world where energy can neither be created nor destroyed, love, guilt, and memory can only change form.