Being exiled is an unenviable fate—even if exile is only a formality. But then the pain of losses fades, the training in the ancestral underground city is over, and a new goal looms ahead—my own, not imposed by power-hungry riss or scheming khorgs… At the same time, fires are blazing in the Northern Principalities, in faraway Han Empire the emperor welcomes envoys of Order and Chaos, and in the western states weapons start to rattle as they eye the lands beyond the Long Sea. And through all of it, the shadows of the eyre flicker… What does all this chaos have to do with a young arnu? But nowhere to go. If you can’t turn aside, then the twilight dragon will go straight through. And into the Abyss—with diplomacy!