Kalina, one of the world's deadliest assassins seeking early retirement, has her home and family snatched from her when her husband's rival stages an insurrection that throws all the tribes of the Hundred Islands off balance. Separated and struggling to regroup, the Netiam allies find help in a scraggy servant boy with a dark past, a tempermental princess, mysterious foreigner, and an unsuspecting pirate. Meanwhile, their rivals grow in strength and numbers across the lush Hundred Islands, attracting the help of foreign royalty and assassins as lethal as Kalina and her husband, Serpent.
The backdrop of this adventure is the flora-diverse archipelago nation, the Hundred Islands. Matching its greenery is its abundance of fauna, and over its terrain, the characters of GQE fight for supremacy.
A boy who becomes an assassin, a draconian princess whose country is at war, and three Guardians trying to rediscover their paths. They struggle to live in their colonies on the continent of Orathan, where oppression, corruption, and murderous intent lurk in every corner. Turmoil stirs in the colonies as their citizens are forced to choose between their home and their King.