THE IMPASSE… An ancient agreement between aloof gods ends a ten-thousand-year galactic war but abandons the survivors to the vicious attentions of corrupted Tuariel overseers. These all-powerful servants wage a never-ending battle against evolution and progress, their inscrutable directives driving them to prune entire civilizations without mercy. They are remorseless, unstoppable, and unkillable… Or so they were until a strange new power from another plane starts to bleed into this one. A select few harness this Aether, resisting tyranny with strange abilities capable of harming the Tuariel. They fashion living weapons to fight back, igniting pockets of hope across the populated worlds. On a distant backwater planet, a young man with a terrible secret must flee home and family to escape certain death at the hands of the Tuariel. An old warrior takes the boy under his wing, revealing dark secrets of his own in the process. When they encounter a strange enclave of misfits and undesirables hiding at the edge of space, events take a turn that will forever alter the course of history. In a universe where science and magic are indistinguishable from each other, one confused young man finds himself the catalyst for a war he did not even know was brewing. Old grudges, new allies, and the hopes of trillions of souls come together in one chaotic moment that will define the future of all sentient life forever.