Years have passed since Galaphile Joss and his life partner, Nirianne, established Paranor as a way to bring harmony to the Four Lands. Now their two sons are becoming men in a land of peace and plenty. Admittedly, it is a land that their eldest child, Abronja, finds rather boring. At 16, he longs for a way to prove himself --- a chance to show he is every bit the equal of his famous father. But when the excitement he has been longing for materializes, it is in the form of an old evil: a dark sorcerer whom his father had defeated but not destroyed. Abronja was conceived while the dark sorcerer had control of Nirianne, and Galaphile has always feared that a spark of malevolence lives on in his beloved child.