The Legions of the Tunulman Republic have won many victories. But Tunulm, the city, its Assembly of laws made by wealthy Patricians, and the growing Empire it draws on the map, win yet more enemies with each campaign. A united force of Veltoi tribes seeks to raid south into Tunulman lands, led by a charismatic chief too young to remember the devastating reprisals the legion enacted on their people forty years ago. Acco, a gifted young warrior, seeks his own glory on that frontline, even as the war draws more lines from poems and prophecies he does not understand. In Tunulm, the daughter of a broken house and an ambitious man of middling equite rank find opportunity for advancement in the chaos war brings. To the East, a legionnaire of the Republic finds himself embroiled in a plot not of his choosing, and is sent to the Empire of Xerxia. In that land, Yatossa, a servant of the Archmagus yearns for lessons of ancient Alchemy, and learns that her new master possesses the greatest secret in the entire world.

For he has that which can make a man a living god.