Never rob a Magi’s tower unless you’re willing to face the consequences. Vie knows the job’s dangerous: the Apocryptein is the most secure tower in the city of Reservwyresport. Then again, the thief possesses a little magic of her own, and the payoff seems worth the risk. Lord Sesellebach tel Haphenasis, warden of the Apocryptein, is not a forgiving man. Finding a short, skinny woman looting his tower, the Magi’s reaction is predictably volatile—and a volatile mage is a destructive mage, even if he should know better. Thief and Magi survive their encounter, but the Apocryptein isn’t so lucky. The tower lies in ruins, its destruction releasing twelve unimaginably powerful beings into the world. Left loose, the Twelve Cataclysms will lay waste to the world. Someone’s got to stop them, and the ruling Magi feels it’s only just that the task should fall to those who released them. Neither Vie nor Haphenasis agree, but the matter’s out of their hands. That the two would rather kill each other than cooperate is, as far as their judges are concerned, of no great importance.