At Arcadia Academy, where bloodline and magic decide everything, magic scholarship student Serra Ashwood steps into the arena carrying a death list of five names — five years ago, these five great families conspired to burn her entire clan to death. She defeats the lightning prodigy of the Varo family before a crowd, but at the moment of victory discovers that the black rune on her left wrist burns in sync with the mark of the academy's strongest fire mage, Kaelan Ashbourne. After a confrontation in the midnight archive, the two discover that Kaelan's mother was the only sixth person who voted against the massacre, publicly executed for treason. They are both the last survivors of the Moon-Fire clan, sharing a curse mark inherited from their grandmother — and the true mastermind is Dean Vane, an immortal vessel possessed for two hundred years by the ancient dark god 'the Throat of the Void,' who manipulated the five families into signing the extermination order.
