Hunted by the minions of hell

Betrayed by those meant to protect him

Bound to a dead mage's angry ghost

Rae Kelthannis has lost everything. Now, he'll risk anything to reclaim the world that sought to destroy him.

Rae believed he was special. Trained to command elemental spirits since he was a child, Rae's dreams of becoming a stormbinder like his father are shattered when his family is falsely implicated in a terrible crime, and they're forced to flee to the edge of the world.

Determined to restore his father's honor, Rae secretly tries to bind a rogue air elemental. Instead, he shackles himself to the wraith of a murdered mage, drawing the attention of a demonic cabal and the anger of the justicars of the Iron Council. Now he's on the run, trying to keep his family safe, all while unraveling the mystery that leads to the heart of their fall from grace, and a conspiracy that threatens the foundations of the world itself.



Tim Akers started writing for game companies while he was still in college, earning credits for White Wolf, Wyrd Games, Paizo, and Kobold Press before turning full time to fiction. His early work included the New Weird thrillers Heart of Veridon, Dead of Veridon, and The Horns of Ruin. He turned to more traditional fantasy with The Hallowed War trilogy, and the lighter Knight Watch series. Recently he has focused on epic fantasy thrillers with The Last Dragon Knight and Servant of a Pale Sword.

Tim grew up in deeply rural North Carolina, and moved to Chicago for college. With the support of his indefatigable wife, he has been writing full time since 2012, and is now utterly unemployable in the traditional sense.