Every night, Luke Nixus has the same dream.

Beneath a sky stained orange by the flames of war, a particular family is beset by a man with blue eyes like crystalline frost and dressed in a charcoal-colored coat, here to twist and sever their lives. That family was Luke's own, nine years gone. Though he's forgotten most of those happy days, he's never forgotten that man's cold eyes— and what he said.

"After today, they will call me Elite."

The object of his ire is one of the newly-established Terra Daevan Empire's six highest authorities, the Elites, a special group of men and women handpicked by the First and Righteous Emperor himself.

Luke lived two lives after that fateful day. A harsh life on the streets that offered starvation or worse for failure, and a quiet life sharing a roof with a stubborn crow of an old man, all the while bearing frustration that could not be quelled, not by the struggle to survival nor tranquil times. In the end, in order to banish the nightmares, he chose to begin a third life— to walk the bleak path of vengeance.

But things are not so simple in the war-torn land of Asundria. The hard-fought peace of modernity balances on a clock hand, and young Luke Nixus inadvertently finds himself standing right on the tip.