The Black Wolves—once elite peacekeepers of Holtland Kingdom—massacred the town of Vrede for reasons lost to rumor. Their leader Wülfhart and his men, along with their families, faced hasty execution under the command of their founder, King Holtwick IV—though some escaped.Amid the chaos, General Breker and his loyalists abandoned Holtland Kingdom to claim the unreachable and forgotten land of Hooge-Suyd. Only they know why and how.Twenty-five years later, resurgent Black Wolves rob and murder on the King’s roads, war stirs with Breker’s looming army, and King Holtwick IV suddenly dies. His young and inexperienced heir, Holtwick V, inherits a crown cracking under the weight of silence and war.In the far reaches of the land, a young man named Mitar flees the Black Wolf-ravaged slave farm of his youth. At the dying request of his adoptive Father, he ventures to the capital, Abdera, seeking refuge and to find a man whose name he didn’t catch—only to have his unknown past claw its way to the surface. With the kingdom wrapped in the shadow of collapse, his past becomes a spark impossible to ignore—for him.