Welcome to Drakestone Academy, where ancient magic breathes through the walls, shadows whisper secrets, and bloodlines carry more than legacy... they carry [...] twenty-five, Elvana Vale attends Drakestone as a first-year student. Haunted by a fragmented family history and drawn to the academy her mother once called home, she arrives with more questions than answers and a growing darkness that stirs beneath her skin.Drakestone is no ordinary school of magic. Its stone halls hold relics of ruin, arcane trials, and a history soaked in blood and betrayal. As Elvana uncovers forbidden truths buried deep within her ancestral name, she finds herself entangled with a mysterious classmate whose past is as haunted as her own, and a cursed relic that may be the key to unraveling-or unmaking-the kingdom of [...] some relics were never meant to be found. And some truths were buried for a reason.Atmospheric, romantic, and edged in danger, A Portrait of Blood and Shadows is the first installment in the dark academia fantasy series Echoes of the Veil-a story of secret legacies, forbidden love, and the price of power when magic remembers what you tried to forget.