For eighteen years, Toren has known only Vessa: a hidden paradise between sea and forest, protected by towering walls from the monsters beyond them. He has grown up beneath flowering trees, beside clear water, among people who have known him all his life, dreaming of the world outside.

Toren wants distant cities, forgotten ruins, and the fire-wielding heroes from his childhood stories. He wants to prove that he is ready for more than the safe life chosen for him.
Then Vessa falls.

Everything Toren once wanted lies beyond the walls, but there is nothing left for him behind them. Forced into a world far larger than he imagined, he must learn how to live with what survived when paradise did not. And when evidence emerges that Vessa’s destruction may not have been an accident, grief becomes something sharper.

Someone took his home from him, and he needs to learn why.
And when he finds the people responsible, he intends to make them answer for it.