Okay, I'll bite. Mostly for the chance at protagonist-describing. I'm shy as FUCK about my story, though. (and it can get grimdark, almost grimderp, at times)
I'm mostly biting because Lucian being reborn into the enemy faction and having to deal with that strikes fairly close to some of the themes I'm trying to explore, and the best friend betrayal also resonates with my poor sadventure. I imagine there's also magic and other chicanery at play here.
Now then...
Enter: Emmett Sinclair. Emmett is an errand boy in a ruined rural village called Charade Gin, apprenticed to a fire magic wielder named Jacqueline. As a farmhand, they have considerable muscle toning and core strength, which helps them on their adventures from time to time.
Why is Charade Gin in ruins? Why, because five years earlier, a bunch of mage-supremacists called the Emissaries of Total Salvation (because they always try to make themselves sound good) stormed in to eradicate every non-caster in the village. Charade Gin's spellcasters didn't like this, but the enemy leader, Aegis, easily overwhelmed them with invisible antimagic that only Emmett was able to actually see. It was a one-sided massacre, with a lot of casualties, including Emmett's parents and their childhood friend's brother.
Oh yeah, before all this, Emmett had a childhood friend named Patrick, who really wanted to fight this overpowered end boss who breaks the magic system. Hard to do that when you can't even see his attacks, but Em didn't know that so they yell at him, basically saying "Hey don't do this!" Patrick's brother, Bryce, has a shit fit, because here this punk is, pretending to be some kind of LEGENDARY HERO or some shite, so he tries to literally curbstomp them.
Except, Aegis saved Emmett's life, by killing Bryce. And now Patrick blames Em, and everyone else thinks they're a giant liar. Oh yeah, adding insult to injury, Emmett IS a spellcaster, but their spellcasting ability is utter bollocks.
Fast forward to present. Jacqueline took Emmett in because they no longer have parents, but gave up teaching them when their Magic didn't grow basically at all in half a decade.
Now Enter: The Can Vahs Arcane Colleges. Think Magic University essentially. They send representatives in to invite Patrick to study because he's a bit of a prodigy. What throws everyone in a tizzy is they also invite Emmett. Now to give an idea how absurd this is, imagine a First-Year Hogwarts Student being recruited into the Auror Office. Now imagine said First-Year suddenly having to perform at that professional level.
AND THE IDIOT ACCEPTS!! So now they have to get from primary-level to postsecondary-level in a MONTH.
Oh and to throw chaos in the fire, they eventually learn that as some sort of cosmic joke, Emmett was taught Magic entirely wrong!! And so they need to relearn from scratch anyway!!
The title of the book is Solstice, and I'm only sharing this because I'm participating in this thread and wish to do so properly, but again I'm dreadfully shy. I was also not in the best of minds when I wrote it, but I'm too stubborn to let a book die, especially when I died for a year and came back like a phoenix
PS: Some quick blurbs about characters that came in while I was writing:
Slime girl seems interesting, fairly generic, but you can do some wild stuff with generic protagonists. I'd play a LOT with that slime malleableness and you can go FAR with that.
And hmm... System trickery. is that System the secret antagonist?! Now that'd be wicked ^w^
