Something answers.

Eli Walsh never asked to be saved. At eighteen, he's weeks from a two-year church mission he doesn't believe in, trapped between a faith he's been faking and a mother whose heart he can't bear to break.

His best friend Mary wasn't going to let him go quietly. Goth, furious, and desperate enough to try anything, she drags him to an ancient mound and calls to powers that should have stayed forgotten.

Now Eli is somewhere else entirely.

A world where magic flows through the elements. Where armies clash over territory he doesn't understand. Where a girl with Mary's face answers to a different name—and where his memories of home are dissolving like smoke.

He's not sure that's a bad thing.

Because here, for the first time, he matters. He can't throw fire or shape water or move stone—but he can make every wielder around him more. It's a power the Citadel buried a long time ago, for reasons no one will say out loud.

Now it's waking in him—and not everyone wants him to survive it.