Daro lies in the sea, and Gellion is imprisoned among the humans while the rest of the elves return to their home continent. Gellion knows who is responsible for the destruction of his city—Kaelo, his mentor of centuries’ past who was exiled for the unthinkable crime of murder. Kaelo now possesses the inexplicable power to break rock with a touch and destroy the elves’ precious vierstone, but to stop him, Gellion must first escape his imprisonment and cross a continent and a sea. Among the humans, however, he stumbles upon a secret so momentous and disturbing it could change everything—if he ever gets back to the elves. Meanwhile, Kaelo is in the Great City of Tura, and the city’s vierstone is blackening at an alarming rate. The elves still do not know Kaelo’s motivation, let alone how to stop him. In their desperation, the elves turn to a cryptic source of answers they must solve before Kaelo takes his plan beyond the walls of Tura.