Noah Tamino's the sort of healer who bursts into tears whenever you remind him that field mice don't live in little mushroom houses. And now, Gods help us all, he's been chosen as the new Hero-King of Aries. As if Noah didn't have enough on his plate! I mean, come on, his fiancee is gone, and he spent the past month being tortured by House Koschei's mastermind, "Little Astrid" herself. Sadly, there's a chain reaction of disaster and civil war going on, so abandoning the Hero-King business is out of the question. But Noah's true challenge won't be in saving the world-but in staying true to himself in the process. But he won't have to do it alone. The Mad Elf is all too eager to unravel Astrid's web of manipulation, while Liv sees the whole thing as another excuse to use the Sevenfold Staff irresponsibly. Aries needs its Hero-King now more than ever. Because the Koscheis are moving into the final phase of their plan: an unholy ritual, 5,200 years in the making, is about to reach its climax. And if Astrid gets her way . . . not only will Luminar pay the price, so will the world of its creators: Earth. It only gets crazier from here.