Reven Si’ahl doesn’t know why Power burns in his veins. He sees snippets, like shattered memories, of a life unknown and hears a voice in his mind that tenderly calls him Beloved. For five years Reven has existed as a simple bard - and an unwilling acquisitions specialist- riding a thin line between glory and agonizing failure with Liam and Ajana, the two thieves who rescued him from the ashes of insanity. It is a debt he is determined to repay, a debt that keeps him from the peace and stability he finds in his music. However, when an urchin apprentice from a fallen empire joins their tenuous, sometimes volatile trio, Reven’s carefully learned and crafted reality starts coming apart piece by piece sparking questions that are better left unanswered.

Kaleo Oenel knows his father is alive. He knows what happened to the tirsai of the Phoenix Empire. Despite the demons of the Spell-Forged Crater pushing forward into Kormaine to tear apart the human-run nation as they did to the tirsai, Kaleo follows his heart – and his dreams – to find his father. Instead, he finds Reven Si’ahl, a drunk bard working with thief-takers that start to question Kaleo’s motives. As he settles in to a new life as an apprentice, his presence starts to unravel secrets that have been kept from Reven for five years. They are secrets that rock Reven’s world and turn his chaotic visions of a life unknown to terrifying nightmares of things to come – of things they’ve both lived through once before…

Five years have passed since the fall of the Phoenix Empire. The tirsai survivors are scattered, leaderless, and in desperate need of a miracle. As history begins to repeat itself, the ashes of pain are ripe for revolution - with Reven as the spark. If only he could remember…