Keiran of the Night Vale has staved off death for two thousand years, but even he's reached his limits. His body is old, worn out, and failing. While the flesh fails, however, his mind and his magic remain as sharp as ever. What he needs is to reincarnate into a fresh, new, young body, and he bends his prodigious talents towards doing exactly that.

He awakens to find that he's been reborn in a wasteland where mana has become a scarce resource, one to be hoarded and guarded jealously. Even the internal mana generated by people is stolen away by those who rule them. And without mana, he's no longer a mage.

It will take more than that to stop Keiran. With each passing week, he regains more of his old strength, but can he keep his secrets safely hidden? Standing in his way is his new home's cult-like nightly mana tithing, a governor with secrets of his own, and an unforgiving desert with hidden monsters who'd love nothing more than to swallow him whole.

It's a deadly scramble to claim the mana he so desperately needs to survive, but Keiran didn't become an archmage by accident, and he's willing to use every dirty trick and tactic he knows to get there again.