After the events of book one, Prince Josua finds himself on the run with his small band of supporters, while his brother, King Elias, expands his evil influence across more of Osten Ard. Simon, on the other hand, is swept up by his pursuit of ancient prophecy as he seeks out the Stone of Farewell, where he hopes to deliver the sword Thorn to Josua. And finally, the King's daughter Miriamele, also remains on the run and hidden from her father, but not from other parties who hope to prosper from her capture. These three PoV characters are all running from pursuit across the land of Osten Ard and they become the lens through which we get to experience the diverse locations that exist and the peoples that inhabit these lands. This book is more about world building than anything else, and it reveals how the current war was shaped not just by the characters we know, but also by many of the key figures from the history of Orsten Ard.

Pern was world poor in metals so the colonists were prepared to abandon most technology and focus on an agrarian society. What the survey probes failed to report was that a planet with an erratic elliptical orbit would pass close enough for the it's voracious "threads" to cross over to Pern where they would devour any organic life they fell on. The colonists were too far from Earth for a message to summon help in time and the ships that brought them to Pern lacked enough fuel to take them somewhere else so they had to improvise. They began carving out massive caves for shelter while their geneticists worked with the native flying fire-breathing lizards to enlarge them and enhance their telepathic ability. The dragonriders of Pern were born and their lives revolved around burning the threads from the sky before they could reach the ground and caring for the dragons they bonded with. Every few hundred years the planet they called the Red Star would be out of range for four hundred years. During one of these long breaks the people hoped the Red Star wouldn't return and they neglected the tithes of necessary goods that supported the dragonriders and Holds warred with each other. Where there had once been several volcanic weyrs of dragonriders there was only one and it's only queen dragon died after laying her last clutch of eggs. The only hope for those who remembered their duty was the golden egg of a queen and the hope that they could find a strong willed woman worthy of bonding that queen. Without a queen there would be no more dragons and the Red Star is growing brighter in the morning sky.

Simon is a kitchen scullion in castle Hayholt, where he spends most of his time trying to avoid doing any real work. Of course his foster mother, Rachel, doesn't approve, so he is delighted when he has the opportunity to become the apprentice of Doctor Morgenes, the castle's healer and wizard. Unfortunately for Simon, that just means more drudgery, sweeping the doctor's floor instead of the kitchen, and learning to read and write. It does, however, put Simon into a position to be involved in a series of events that will change the kingdom of Osten Ard forever. After the death of King John, his son Elias takes the throne and quickly falls under the spell of his advisor, Pyrates, who advises him to seek arcane power from questionable sources. Then, the new King's brother, Josua, mysteriously disappears, and that's when Simon discovers him imprisoned in the castle. Simon reports this to Morgenes, and the seeds of a rebellion are born

Mara of the Acoma is taking her final vows as a priestess when she learns that her father and brother have died in the Riftwar. As the only surviving member of the Acoma, she is now the Ruling Lady and must prepare to defend her estates and the people sworn to her service while dodging assassins. Honor also demands that she avenge her father and brother because they were betrayed on the battlefield by a commander belonging to the more powerful Minwanabi family. As a noble daughter, she wasn't educated to lead the house in politics and battle, but Mara quickly proves that she is intelligent, bold, and willing to bend tradition to her advantage. Only fools underestimate a woman determined to have her revenge.

Rae's sister is obsessed with a fantasy series involving a Cinderella style heroine loved by all. In this series, both the spoiled king and his loyal best friend fall for her, creating an angst ridden love triangle before she's assassinated. With his queen dead, the king takes up his prophesied role as Emperor with vicious ruthlessness. Rae and her sister argue over which of the two guys are ultimately the better character, but her sister always gets annoyed with Rae because even though she is only 20 years old, she is dying of cancer and often doesn't remember the character names and plot points. No one else visits Rae anymore though, until a stranger offers her the chance to enter the fantasy world in the series to get the Flower of Life and Death to save herself. She doesn't really believe it, until she wakes up pain free in a character's body. Too bad the body belongs to the heroine's evil step-sister, scheduled to be executed in horrible fairy-tale style the next day. There are so many directions this plot could go, but it skips over most of the obvious to create a bazaar and oddly serious look at literary tropes and real human emotions.

Zac is camping with some friends when Earth gets inducted by the Multiverse System. Since Earth doesn't meet the Multiverse standard, it is fused with three other worlds to create one larger planet composed of random pieces of terrain from all four worlds to create a D-grade world. This is theoretically a great opportunity for potential Cultivators, since most worlds are inducted as F-grade. The first thing that happens is that one third of the populations are deemed potential Cultivators, i.e. they can naturally absorb enough cosmic energy to efficiently improve themselves, and are teleported to Tutorial Villages. Sadly for Zac, he's in the other 66%. All he got was the message about the induction and then a message that he's in the exact spot where something else is supposed to materialize and the System can't merge them. Since two beings can't occupy the same spot they have to roll for it, with Zac rolling 1-100 and the "Herald" rolling 1-100,000 because of its level. Who said the Apocalypse would be fair?

Demir Grappo is a powerful glassdancer and a successful military leader, even at his young age. Despite these innate talents and abilities, he has a solid moral compass and he shows unusual compassion to the rebellious factions that he is sent to put down. Such talent and promise breeds jealousy, and when a political rival maneuvers to turn his greatest military victory into a bloody massacre caused by his own troops, he mentally breaks. The emotional toll of what happened under his command is just too much to bear and Demir walks away from everything, including his eventual inheritance, to live out his life as a grifter. That is until his mother, a powerful political figure and head of his family, is murdered on the city streets. Demir returns from exile to use the resources of his family to uncover the truth about his mother's murder, and of course things get complicated very quickly.

Unholy Island, the mostly forgotten neighbor of Holy Island, is a strange place that everyone quickly forgets, except the few granted sanctuary there. Esme Gray escaped an abusive marriage and found her way to the island because their previous Ward Witch had died, and ridiculous as it seems, it's now her job to run the guesthouse while she maintains the island's protections. Luke Taylor has been searching over a year for his missing twin brother and follows a rumor that leads him to Unholy Island, where a suspicious murder leaves the island in need of a Book Keeper, which he finds a strange term for someone who runs a bookshop. Then there is the kindly old mayor Tobias who was the island's first resident so long ago he barely recalls his true nature. All three of them are weaker than they should be, but together they form a tenuous bulwark against the end of the Earth.

Despite growing in power as a wizard, Kazamir Wolfe still finds himself unable to do much to stop the impending convergence of our world with the netherworld. He does know that it will be apocalyptic if the gods of the netherworld make their way to Earth, so he must ensure that doesn't happen. His ability to see the flow of magic shows him that magic is growing throughout Europe and he can even see multiple anchor points where he expects portals will open when the time comes. However, all of his efforts to destroy those anchors have proven to be a waste of time. Frustrated and desperate, he convinces his eclectic team of misfits that the best course of action is to tackle the problem from the other side. That means it is time for a road trip into the netherworld itself. What could possibly go wrong?

The last time we saw Kaylin Neya the Chosen was rescuing an old woman named Imelda and her ghostly roommates from an evil Barrani wizard. Imelda has joined Kaylin's eclectic household, but there are still many questions about her ability to see and communicate with ghosts. Only Kaylin knows that Imelda can also command spirits because tales of necromancers are all about armies of undead, not grandmotherly women who take cookies to Elantra's police and the dragons are already nervous enough. Speaking of dragons, Bellusdeo is enraged again. As the only female dragon everyone expects her to waste no time producing more and she finally chose Emmerian as a potential mate because he was the least annoying. Unfortunately, the whole idea still drives her crazy so she attaches herself to Kaylin's continuing investigation of Imelda's situation to avoid the issue. Once again the Elements are disquieted and it seems to be related to an Ancient, aka those beings that made the worlds and various races, that was being used by the Barrani wizard as a power source. Kaylin freed it but it's power is now leeching into the world and distorting reality. Kaylin has no idea what she can do since it says it's already dead, but once again it's up to the Chosen to save the world.