Cael Dunmore is just a miner's son on a rock at the bottom of the sky, and the only thing he owns is a dead stone on a string his vanished father told him never to take off. Then the floor of the mine opens under him, and in the dark beneath, something that has been sleeping for a very long time awakens. In Aethos, the crown owns every living crystal in the sky, and every soul that bonds to one. A boy who wakes a bond without permission isn't a miracle. He's a problem. And problems in the Reaches have a way of being dealt with.
