The crystal reads every soul. It cannot read his.In Hearthveil, every sixteen-year-old lays a hand on the Rite crystal and receives their mark and their place: Delver, Tiller, Smith. When blacksmith's son Kael Ashworth touches it, the light goes out.No crystal has ever failed. Inquisitor Halvard Crane takes Kael's name and rides for a tribunal. Before dawn, Kael's father sends him north with a sword, a false name a...

Everything he inherited is trying to kill him.North of the last Church road, the Unclaimed Reach has no maps. Only a belt of waypoint fires, and dungeon doors that open onto somewhere else.Kael Ashworth walks it alone: weaponless, half-starved, answering to a false name, carrying a black mark no crystal could read. Behind him, Inquisitor Halvard Crane is still counting stones. Above Crane, someone colder has taken an interest in the case.To eat, Kae...