When seventeen year old Dara is accepted into an elite boarding school, her first weeks are ruined by a strange illness… Throwing up in front of your crush? More than once? Emphatically not fun. As Dara gets to know her school and the school’s creepy doctor, she begins to realize that she wasn’t recruited for her grades, and her illness isn’t innocent. John is only pretending to be a student, and he knows exactly why Dara is sick, but he can’t risk telling her. When someone is playing with time, altering anything can be disastrous, and John has a very specific mission. But when Dara’s life is at risk, they both must learn to navigate the intricacies of time…before they destroy the school or lose each other for good.

In the world is divided into seven Masters, each with the colors from red to violet to black, one is assigned a tattoo once they reach the age of eighteen. Polen is not your average boy in this world, with an older brother who received his tattoo far too early, no parents, two younger sisters, and brains that far exceed the norm. He is destined for greatness, but even so, no one was expecting him to gain the highest rank possible, Onyx. Polen quickly realizes the tattoos, especially the one of Onyx, are not all that they're made out to be; so, due to his own personal experiences, he joins the rebel group aiming to end the practice of the inking. Along the way, as he matures and learns and grows, he encounters many people, some of them true friends, some of them traitors, and some of them simply allies or enemies. Polen soon learns that rebelling against an age-old system isn't as pretty and easy as he thought as he fights family, watches friends die, sees enemies destroyed and agonizes as innocents are killed. Though Polen never considered himself fighter, he has no choice - after all, it's all for the sake of humanity itself. And besides... if he doesn't fight, he will die.