Flames scorch the countryside, thousands of screams sail on the night wind, and silversmith Aden Caverly finds himself chased from his home and hunted down by the cruel Ralsians of the north. While he knows that the war has been going on for a year now, he doesn't know what hides in his future - a quest that will take him across the Continent and into unknown lands. In the mysterious Temple of Septimus, a world away, lies the Staff of Eleuthera, a weapon that has the power to give and to take, to create and to destroy, to make one a god on earth. The Staff, perhaps is the Mathedian Empire's only chance at defeating the fast-approaching armies of Lord Slade, led by a pale-faced demon whose powers could be more terrifying than those of the Staff itself.