The Slumbering Virtuoso of Vrost

I stood dripping in bioluminescent sap before the entire Conservatory, the echoes of a thousand laughing students ringing in my ears. My tuning-sphere had been sabotaged during the grand assembly. My sweet step-sister, Liska, watched from the front row, weeping into her lace handkerchief while a translucent, jagged screen hovered above her head: 'Awaiting target's insecurity spike to initiate talent siphon.' But standing there in the cold, I only felt one thing: profound relief. A public failure meant a week of suspension, which meant a week of uninterrupted sleep in the damp, echoing greenhouses. Liska’s parasitic System feeds on self-doubt, but it’s starving to death. Every terrifying trap she lays to break my spirit - from haunted study halls to cursed acoustic instruments - only provides me with brilliant, accidental shortcuts that let me finish my assignments in half the time without trying. With my paranoid sidekick yammering about acoustic conspiracies and the shadows in the academy growing longer each day, I just want a nap. But as Liska grows desperate and the sabotages escalate into criminal territory, will I finally have to wake up and face the rot within my own family?