Brennan Harper has the same conviction everyone (who isn't crazy) does - he's human. Then an enigmatic stranger reveals the truth: Brennan is Tyrysian, descendant of Guardians, heir to untold power. It is what he isn't told - that he is a key in a thousand-year war that began light years away - that will get him in the end. Ripped from his nearly perfect life, Brennan struggles to put to rest his own dark past while learning to control the Disciplines of his progenitors in order to help turn the tide against the Ci-áryn - dissenters who have been working to enslave the inhabitants of Earth since discovering it. Overwhelmed and undermanned, out of time and in over his head, Brennan fights to not simply save the planet but to resurrect the belief in a people he never knew existed...even if that ultimately leads to his demise.