In the ancient Great Huai Empire, tradition dictates a person's fate. For Jing Xiao Fei, fate is nothing more than unending toil and the suffocating control of his family. Marked as a ger and treated as a disposable worker, his life is a desperate, narrow path devoted solely to protecting his younger brother.
But his world shatters when a foraging trip leads him to a high mountain ridge and a terrifying secret: a massive, unconscious, and savagely wounded stranger. This man is a figure of imposing size, his foreign features hinting at a dangerous world Xiao Fei has only dreamed of.
Hiding this fugitive risks the lives of everyone he holds dear. Yet, driven by an unyielding righteousness, Xiao Fei makes a choice of radical, reckless compassion. He takes the wound-man in, binding his own small survival to a secret that could destroy his family and expose him to a power he cannot possibly fight. The man is a ghost of war and privilege; the boy is a shadow of his own household. Their meeting will pull both into a current of perilous secrets and impossible decisions that will rewrite the very rules of the Empire.
