The fellowship is fracturing.
Kevin is haunted by visions of an ice palace he cannot remember building. Carl carries twenty years of guilt he cannot confess. Paz struggles to hold together a team unraveling at its core.
The mission is clear: retrieve the fourth Power Sword from the Northern Shrine. But when the team arrives, they uncover the truth Kevin has been running from since childhood. He did not come to Rowen to save anyone. He created Rowen to escape - a reality-bending defense mechanism built around a trauma so devastating he erased it from his own memory.
The ice palace. The heroic narrative. The Power Swords themselves. All of it was constructed to avoid the day a gunman walked into his school and Kevin's world shattered permanently.
Now hunted by Anbar forces and betrayed by allies, Kevin faces an impossible choice: continue fighting and watch everyone he loves die for his sins, or surrender to the Mind Demon and finally let the guilt consume him.
Carl believed his mission was to save Kevin. He was wrong. His mission is to let Kevin save himself - even if that means watching him fall.
Book 4 of 5. All books available now.
Perfect for fans of Will Wight's Cradle series and Evan Winter's The Rage of Dragons.