Emrael Ire and his brother, Ban, are students at the Citadel, a school of military arts and infusori Crafting, studying for their Master’s Marks. They are the heirs to the Iraean Kingdom by blood right, or would be if Iraea hadn’t been conquered and subjugated by the Provinces fifty years earlier.
Governor Corrande, the leader of a neighboring province, attacks the school in a bid to control the Citadel’s infusori-Crafting resources as he launches a war against the Ordenan Empire. Emrael’s mentor, Jaina, manages to get him and his friend Elle Barros, the daughter of Governor Barros, and Elle’s mentor, Master Yerdon, to safety. She is aided by her fellow Ordenan mages, called Imperators, Sarlon and Yamara. Jaina and her friends are citizens of the powerful Ordenan Empire; more than that, they are trained infusori mages placed in the Provinces by their Order of Imperators. In the course of their escape, Emrael discovers his own budding mage powers, much to Jaina’s chagrin.
Emrael and his friends are tracked down and attacked again by the forces that attacked the Citadel—the United Provincial Legion, more commonly known as the Watchers. Emrael and his friends are separated, but Jaina finds him in the woods outside the city, and together they recruit the help of Emrael’s old friend Halrec, an officer in the Barros Legion.
The Watchers catch up to Sarlon, Yamara, Elle, and Yerdon on the road to Elle’s home city. They grievously injure Yamara during Emrael and Jaina’s rescue attempt, and Emrael just barely manages to survive a fight with Darmon Corrande, the son of Governor Corrande, and the sinister Malithii mage-priests from the faraway Westlands who have allied themselves with Corrande and the Watchers.
Emrael and his friends are detained when they seek medical aid, and shipped to the Barros capital for judgment, save for Sarlon and Yamara, who are granted leave to remain for treatment from the Barros Legion healers. En route, they are attacked again by the Malithii, who have brought their monstrous undead slaves, their soulbound. The entire Barros Legion party escorting the captives is killed save for two men. Jaina, very familiar with fighting soulbound and their Malithii masters, manages to shepherd Emrael, Elle, and Halrec to safety once more. In the midst of their escape, they encounter an ancient Ravan temple in the forest, on their way to the city of Whitehall. Their enemies catch up to them before they reach the city, and they encounter an unlikely ally in Toravin, an Iraean soldier turned smuggler, who helps them fight off the soulbound and Malithii attackers. Emrael puts his life on the line to protect a helpless woman and her children from the soulbound, and Elle is forced to sacrifice the life of her mentor, Master Yerdon, to save Emrael.
Upon reaching Whitehall, Emrael attempts to leverage Elle’s status as daughter of a governor to negotiate with the Lord of Whitehall, Lord Holder Norta. Instead, they and Sarlon, who catches up to them after his wife, Yamara, dies, are thrown into Whitehall Keep’s dungeon. Lord Holder Norta doesn’t count on Emrael and Sarlon’s mage abilities, however, and they quickly escape. On the way out, they also liberate a fellow prisoner who turns out to be Lord Holder Norta’s traitorous son, Dorae Norta. Dorae immediately resumes his bid to overthrow his father upon his escape, and Emrael et al. use this as their chance to raid the location of the captive Citadel students held in the city.
Alas, Ban isn’t among the students they free, and they must now attempt a rescue back at the Citadel in Myntar where their adventure began. Luckily, Dorae’s revolution has been successful this time, as he had retained many friends and followers from a failed coup three years prior. He raises an army of retired Legion soldiers and home-trained craftsmen for Emrael, primarily to deflect the attention of the Provincial forces away from himself but ostensibly with the aim of resurrecting the Iraean Kingdom.
Emrael and friends lead this ragtag army to Myntar and are successful in their assault, save for Emrael’s own raid into the Citadel, where the Watchers and their Malithii allies are more prepared for the attack than he was led to believe. His men are killed; he is captured, and subjected to excruciating torture at the hand of a mute madman working under Malithii priests. When the Malithii begin to torture his brother, Ban, in the same room, Emrael breaks the bounds of what he has been told is possible and draws infusori directly from his environment. He frees himself and kills his torturer, only to find that the mute madman was his father, who had gone missing years earlier in a botched military operation. The Malithii had captured him and forced him to torture his own sons using a Crafted control device called a mindbinder.
Emrael is devastated physically and emotionally, but manages to carry Ban to safety. Jaina has fetched Emrael’s mother, Maira, and a formidable force of Ordenan Imperators from their homeland. Maira heals her sons and the Imperators lead the Iraeans in a final successful assault of the Watchers, Malithii, and soulbound holed up in the Citadel.
But the war they have started is far from over.…