Born the night that the Archmagus Valeria died, Endrance was gifted with the talent and mind for magic. He'd proven that he was more than capable of mastering the forces of magic and intellectual study at the hands of a master as mad as he was crafty. He was one of the Scribed; mages who had undergone a painful yet powerful ritual that granted them the ability to tattoo spells upon their very skin. He had finally proven himself to his master, and was free to practice magic at his own pace.

Given a short time to prepare before he is to return to Ironsoul for trial, Endrance gets dragged into a fight to save not only his life, but the life of everyone living on Mount Balator. Armies of the dead arise, and only the crowning of a new king will stop them. Now he will be pushed harder than he’s ever had to stand. Farther than he’s ever had to go. He is about to be challenged in ways that made Kalenden seem like a warm-up.

Endrance was finally free to return to Ironsoul and face the accusations placed before him. He had grown as a mage and as a man, the quality of his character proving to be up to the challenges that the fires of fate had in store for him. All he had to do was return home, prove his innocence, and everything would return to normal. But the land of Ironsoul has a different rule, and it is first and foremost the territory of his long thought to be dead mother, Valeria.

Trapped by his own hubris, Endrance was humbled by his failure. But he can't let Valeria remain free. While his companions fought to find him, Endrance needed to find a way to escape a prison capable of holding an almost godlike Mercanian. Endrance had been manipulated and led to that prison, and that meant that beyond the Bastille, his captors had no further plans for him. It meant that, should he escape, he would have a freedom he never experienced before.

With the defeat of Valeria behind him, Endrance has only the Malchoir left to track down. The world wouldn't be able to handle even one Mercanian regaining their power. They had kept humankind as slave labor and a source of blood for their own magical rituals and would certainly do so again. While he didn't know for certain what Malchoir had planned, it involved going deep into a region of the world called the Shatter: the destroyed homeland of the Mercanian Empire so terribly besotted with magic gone wrong that nothing could live there and not be warped by its influence.