Worth the Candle: Sound and Silence: A LitRPG Adventure

by Alexander Wales

Always the Dungeon Master, never the academic.

Juniper Smith always dreamed of attending a magic college. Now he's enrolled at the Athenaeum of Sound and Silence, where students learn to bend velocity and freeze motion itself. There's just one he's there as a government operative, hunting threats that lurk in the shadows between lectures.

Echoes of Earth follow him even here. An old friend wears a stranger's face, carrying secrets about Arthur's time in Juniper's world—secrets that could rewrite everything Juniper thought he understood. Under the watchful eye of an umbral professor draped in colors that belie her shadowy nature, he finds himself navigating lessons far more dangerous than any syllabus.

Dark forces are converging on the athenaeum, and Juniper is about to get an education in more ways than one.

834 pages, Kindle Edition

Published March 16, 2026

About the author

Alexander Wales is the pseudonym of Ben Friesen. Ben is a writer and stay-at-home dad located in Duluth, MN with his wife, their son, and cat.