A hundred years before Noam and Dara, two very different revolutionaries fought for justice on Carolinian soil. Sixteen-year-old Calix Lehrer has spent the past four years being tortured in a government-run hospital by scientists seeking to understand his dangerous magical abilities. Now that he’s free, he joins with his brother Adalwolf, a so-called terrorist who leads a violent militia fighting to destroy a United States that seeks to exterminate all witchings. Calix has always been smart–too smart for his own good, Adalwolf would say–and when Adalwolf asks, he’s only too willing to apply that intelligence to military strategy. But something’s not right in Calix’s mind, and the more he plots death and destruction, the deeper that darkness takes root. And if Adalwolf can’t figure out a way to help his brother, there might be nothing left of Calix to save.