In the Miers, a fragile peace has held for the twenty years since the Spirit Wars. Mortals stay within their boundaries, and the Faen keep to the Lost Green. Anything else is suicide. Renly Teurig, a young musician, unwittingly binds himself to a Bardic War Lute, becoming the reluctant Champion of Tetulinok, a Celestial Muse. Acting on the Muse's will soon ends in disaster—his sister Chloe is left unable to walk, scarred beyond recognition, and Renly is exiled in disgrace.

Kidnapped and presumed dead, Kizu returns ten years later – just in time to enroll at an elite magical academy. His education under the witch who kidnapped and raised him was… unorthodox. Now, three years behind every other student his age, he is ranked as the overall worst student at Shinzou Academy. But Kizu is determined to quickly change that. Not just for the sake of mastering long-denied schools of magic, but to investigate his older sister’s disappearance.

In an Empire run on necromancy, dead sorcerers are the lifeblood. Their corpses are wrapped in chains and drained of magic to feed the unquenchable hunger for imperial conquest. Born with magic, Arienne has become resigned to her dark fate. But when the voice of a long-dead sorcerer begins to speak inside her head, she listens. There may be another future for her, if she’s willing to fight for it. Miles away, beneath a volcano, a seven-eyed dragon also wears the Empire’s chains. Before the imperial fist closed around their lands, it was the people’s sacred guardian.

Runaway heir Rasp Stoneclaw was born cursed, prophesied to bring destruction to the world. Now exiled by the Stoneclaw tribe after his brothers drove him out, he lives under an assumed name. Far from the curse, of course. Meanwhile, Protector of the Realm Oralia Dawnsight—along with her team, the rebellious faithful four—is on the hunt for Rasp, ready to restore him to the throne for the small price of a trade route truce. She'll get Rasp to agree to a deal, and then they'll be on their way up the mountain path to install him as the new, peaceful leader of the Iron Ridge. Simple, right?

In the Dominions, the dead linger, violent and unpredictable, unless a bonesmith severs the ghost from its earthly remains. For bonesmith Wren, becoming a valkyr—a ghost-fighting warrior—is a chance to solidify her place in the noble House of Bone and impress her frequently absent father. But when sabotage causes Wren to fail her qualifying trial, she is banished to the Border Wall, the last line of defense against a wasteland called the Breach where the vicious dead roam unchecked.