What do you desire most in life? Think about it, little one. What power would you wield, what wisdom would you grasp, what fortunes would you lay at your feet, if you could have anything you wanted? Now, tell me: what price are you willing to pay for that desire? Is it enough? The Empire of the Faetr. Land of faetriels, and home to the powerful Heir Families. Historians claimed it once had a different name, but no one remembered it anymore. With the constant threat of Fog Beasts, and the looming terror of the cyclical apocalyptic event known as the Red Night, no one had time to remember. In the empire, all heirs had their sworn duties: to fight, hunt, and protect. This was a truth as immutable as the fate that shone within each and every faetriel. Their fate was their divine blood, the source of their power, bestowed upon them by the very Faetr itself. At the age of six, the heir Eilai learned that this immutable truth was false: his fate had no light. A ‘dark fate’, they called it, and it meant his fate might as well not exist at all. There was no cure, they told him. There was nothing anyone could do. But Eilai refused to accept this. He was determined to find an answer, no matter what it took. No matter what mysteries he had to unravel, what beasts he had to fight, what secrets he had to keep from his brother and his best friend—he would do it all, if it meant he could one day find a cure. If it meant he could one day have a brilliant, shining fate. If it meant he could one day escape the endless, devouring nothingness of his dark fate. But there were secrets carved into the very marrow of the Empire’s bones. And as his research led him to mysteries that had remained buried for thousands of years, Eilai came to realize that there were monsters far worse than mere beasts hiding in the Fog.