Four months of searching have led me to the Stronghold of the Winds, a free city populated by mercenaries. My Athena is dying, locked in a cocoon of abnormal evolution, against which all magic is futile. The only person that can save my pet predator is a browbeaten kid from the slums named Mika, who can sew living flesh with a regular scalpel.
I thought we were just making a deal, that he would operate on my familiar in exchange for me entering the deadly Four Crowns Tournament to get medicine for his sick sister. But I was fatally mistaken. The elusive Alpha of Life traces straight back to this kid.
Our enemies are no longer hiding in the woods. They've learned to fake the very essence of magic and started creating horrific mutants.
I'm going to have to leave the shadows and enter the arena, pitting myself against the mainland's most powerful Gamekeepers.
The rules have changed. The true monster now has a human face.