Orion, a student of the Academy, a school that trains devotees of the god Aarus, is about to have his eighteenth birthday. Trained to be a Chronicler, a historian who travels from town to town documenting important events, he is looking forward to his new life after graduation. There is only one hitch: every student of the Academy who turns eighteen is required to take a turn at attempting to pull a magical sword from an obelisk. Whoever is successful must set out on a perilous quest to find and kill the False One, a mysterious being who attempted to overthrow Aarus a millennia ago.
Much to everyone's surprise, and his own dismay, Orion is chosen as the next Quester and is soon sent out on his journey. He meets Cassi, a feisty young blacksmith, who joins him on his quest, and together they must face the killer Shadows who haunt the forest along the way. As they hunt for the False One, with danger around every corner, Orion knows only too well that no peer who set out on this quest before him has ever returned to tell the tale.