The world is an unfair place where happenstance and the circumstances of your birth can bind you to a life of suffering, servitude, and drudgery. Both are true for Kaff Aderlai, a talented magic user learning to harness his talents at the Virras Military Academy.  By fate or misfortune, his carefully planned life was upended by the discovery that he had magical talent, forcing him into a world filled with duplicitous nobles, city-destroying monsters, and the very magic used to craft the universe itself.  War looms on the horizon, and Kaff's nation spent a lot of money to train him into a finely tuned weapon. Whether he survives or not, they plan on getting a return on that investment.