The Fifth Age dawns. The Eldar are gone, Sauron is vanquished, and all that remain are the kingdoms of men rising slowly higher into the future. To the south, industry churns in the city of Minas Dant. On the borderlands brew the seeds of a conflict unknown to Arda since before the Fourth Age. Tiel's messed up again. And he's running out of options. The Guild's only good to him when it helps them-otherwise, they wouldn't spend time on him: brutish, broke, and unstable. But the path ahead gets narrower and narrower. One day, he'll find that he's slipped just too far to come back. Or has he always been this irredeemable? Far on the other end of the sea, Haldanáro wakes up. Twenty years after his Return from the Halls of Mandos, he has yet to know either memory or identity. Rattled by taunting dreams, he takes a gambit-and opens his eyes to a new world. Yet the future is closing. Arda shakes and tremors; a war is coming. And they may already be out of time.