Michael Watson is an accident investigator for the National Security Transportation Board, a man from an abusive family trying to battle his personal demons. Things suddenly fall apart when his fiancee's plane explodes in midair, putting him on the front lines of an investigation into her death--and the deaths of over a hundred other people. Michael is close to despair when the news comes in: there is a single survivor. Who is the survivor, and what does she know about the accident? These are the questions that will haunt Michael as he hunts for the truth.

Xian is the only apprentice of the Immortal Empress, the first she has taken in centuries. And now the Empress is sending Xian away, into temporary exile far from the politics of the Sacred Mountain. Xian fears the next years will be nothing but boredom, sequestered in a forgotten library far from home. Unfortunately, boredom will be the least of Xian's worries on her journey to the town of Seven Bridges, where she will come face to face with a danger from a forgotten time.