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A land under occupation. A legendary sword. A young man's journey to find his destiny. Aren has lived by behaved himself and followed the rules all his entire life. He's , never questioned it; that's just the way things arestopping to think about why. But then , after his father is executed for treason, and he and his best friend Cade cade are thrown into sent to a prison mine, doomed he slowly starts to work until they drop. Unless they can somehow break free . . But what lies beyond the prison walls realise that everything he knows about his world is more terrifying stilla lie. Rescued After being rescued by a man who hates him , yet is oathhonour-bound to protect him, and pursued by inhuman forcesfoes, Aren slowly accepts that everything he knew about his world was finds himself dragged into a lie. The rules are not there to protect him, or his people, but to enslave them. A brewing revolution is brewing, and Aren is being drawn into it, whether he likes it or not. The key to the revolution winning this war is the Ember Blade. The , the sword of kings, the Excalibur of and a symbol for his people. Only with the Ember Blade in hand can their people be inspired to rise up... but it's , which is currently locked in an impenetrable vault in the most heavily guarded fortress -fortified place in the land. All they have to do now is steal it...
It's hard to pin down who exactly the protagonist of the novel, since all of the major characters get a few chapters written from their point of view, even one of the major antagonists. But, the two characters who get the most narrative focus are Aren, whose chapters chronicle his journey from a naïve young boy, to a brave young man fighting for Ossia's freedom, and Aren's best friend Cade, the son of a carpenter with dreams of being a greycloak (the supposed resistance to the Krodan occupation), who also loves to tell stories and generally entertain his fellow adventurers. They are being hunted by the Iron Hand, the Krodan secret police, headed up by Klyssen, whose viewpoint chapters do a very good job of humanising him, rather than presenting him as a one-dimensional plot device.
