For a thousand years, the wall at Zuran has divided two worlds.

On one side, the Empire of man. On the other, the Slad. Towering reptilian warriors whispered of as demons, glimpsed only once a decade when diplomats meet in the no-man’s-land between the walls.

Ardus Melnari, commander of Zuran, expects the year of meeting to pass like all others. Instead, he watches assassins slaughter the Slad delegation. A massacre designed to ignite a war mankind cannot win.

Summoned before a young Emperor whose cruelty grows bolder by the day, Ardus is ordered to retrieve the one man alive who speaks the Slad tongue: his exiled master, the legendary champion Bartalos. But Bartalos knows truths that were buried with his banishment about the Slad, the Empire, and an ancient enemy stirring in the dark.

With a band of unlikely allies including a thief, a witch, a killer seeking redemption, and a girl escaping the Emperor’s gilded cage, Ardus must cross the deadliest pass in the world to reach the one race that can save them.

Because the monsters were never behind the wall.

They were already inside.