An ancient power and the terrible creatures it wields press closer than ever against the verges of the Heartlands. The great border walls and gates so long depended upon are haunted no longer only through the dead of night. Having already reduced much of the world beyond to ruin, the evil of the Black Wind seems now to be turning its full attention upon the realm. And amongst it all, a life unnoticed amidst the vastness of the world, an old man spends the winter of his many years searching for that which to others has long-since fallen into myth, or ridicule. He searches for the very Heart of Magic itself. From a Council savagely hostile to the powers and enchantments enjoyed by those who live without the protection and confinement of the grand walls of its city; through lands unseen and forgotten for generations, the old man and those he would call his family must slip unnoticed to an end as uncertain as the very purpose of their journey. The fears of what may lie ahead are as terrifying only as the thought of that which lies behind.