Tarren is a [Miner], like his father before him. He works with pick in hand, trying desparately to meet the quotas placed on him by the Alteriad System so that he can earn his daily mana allotment and help his family scrape by for one more day. When a series of fateful accidents cause his path to intersect with a rogue group of Cultivators, heretics who live in opposition to the rigid oversight of the Alteriad, his life will be changed forever. Suddenly offered more power than he knows what to do with--and thrust into the center of a war he didn't know was being waged--Tarren will have to weigh his every move carefully in order to protect himself and his family. But if he can succeed -- if he can master not only himself but the strange new powers saddled on him by the Cultivators -- then Tarren will be able to make the world his own.