Arc 1 - Trellin and Avira

When the novel opens, Trellin, a junior hunter, is leaving the plains town of Mersali to go hunting prior to the Festival of Knives - a yearly event when the hunters take trophy kills to register for higher-ranked tags. A tag is required to leave the city, marking the bearer as a member of either the Hunter’s Guild or the Merchant’s Guild. As a leather-tag holder, Trellin is among the weakest of the hunters, but is still allowed to leave. (Note - Hunter’s Guild tags are, from lowest to highest - Wood, Leather, Bone, Iron, Chitin, Steel, Silver, and Gold.)

Once outside the city, he quickly exits the trail, and sneaks across a boundary that states he’s too low-ranked to pass. On the other side, he enters a ravine, and tracks the signature of a fiend called an issachi, akin to a large moose with steel horns and hooves. He tries to sneak up on the sleeping fiend, but as he gets close, it’s woken by the distant cry of a plains creature, and he’s forced into a fight.

Trellin tries to engage with the issachi, but quickly realizes that with the moment of surprise lost, he’s in an unfavorable position. Choosing to leave and regroup rather than continue a risky battle, he tries to leave, but the issachi blocks his way. He tries to use his aerial unit to ascend the ravine, a belt-mounted grapple, but the unit jams and leaves him dangling in midair.

He hears the cries of another hunter approaching, trying to guide him out of the ravine, but is in too deep. With the issachi beneath him, his grapple rips free, sending him to the ground. Hurt and winded, he faces off one last time with the creature, calling on his daily ability Rootbound, which roots him to the ground and heals him. With the help of those roots, he stops the issachi’s next charge, toppling the fiend, and mortally wounds it. As it flees, it’s slain by an approaching hunter.

Trellin is confronted by the hunter, a white-haired woman with yellow eyes who stares him down, but allows him to begin processing the kill. Trellin surprises her by butchering the issachi for its meat instead of focusing on the hide or horns. She introduces herself as Avira, and questions him on why he’s hunting outside his allowed area. He freezes up, but confesses, and she says she does not plan on turning him in. She is again surprised to learn that he is a leather-tag, instead of something higher-ranked.

Avira insists on escorting Trellin back to Mersali, where he returns to his family’s restaurant with her. His father confronts him over the issachi, recognizing that it’s too high-ranked a fiend for Trellin to be allowed to hunt, but Avira intervenes. She displays her tag - a silver-tag, the highest rank available for usual hunters - says that Trellin was helping her, and that she has extended an offer to be his guide, take him as her shadow - master and apprentice.

Trellin is baffled to hear this, but his parents are overjoyed. His father accepts this rationale for Trellin having the issachi steaks immediately, and dismisses the two to talk privately. Once alone, Trellin confronts Avira - both over this surprise offer of a shadowing, and her strange heritage.

Avira admits that, yes, she is only half human, being a half-blooded wraith - a fiendlike race with affinity for wind and water, native to the eastern saltmarshes of their nation, Aradhen. She turns the question back on Trellin - who likewise has to admit that his mother is a half-blooded dryad, which makes him a quarter-blooded treant.

With both of them knowing more about what the other is, Avira reveals that she is competing in the Crown Challenge, a once-a-decade event during the Festival of Knives where the highest-ranked hunters can compete for the gold-tag, the guildmaster’s seat. She says that she has enemies who would seek to knock her out of the running, but that Trellin is in a goldilocks zone of outwardly weak enough where he wouldn’t be considered by her enemies, but is strong enough to actually be of use to her. She warns that the event will be extremely dangerous - but potentially an incredible opportunity for Trellin to vault to prominence in the guild.

Trellin realizes that this is his way out, and without it, he’ll still be trapped helping the family business instead of properly gaining ranks through the festival. After a moment’s hesitation, he accepts the offer.

From there, Avira rushes him through the needed preparations. They have a bonding band added to their marks - tattoos imbued with their aura, the mana that gives them superhuman strength and agility during combat. The bonding band links the two of them, allowing them to locate each other and monitor the other’s aura usage. She has new armor made for him, and he picks out a proper sword and shield - the latter of which contains two upgrade slots for the shield to be upgraded with parts harvested off fiends.

With his gear set and the two properly bonded, they depart Mersali toward Linead, the capital of Aradhen. On the way, Avira sets Trellin against several fiends - first the tittara, a fiend akin to a flying squirrel, where she again watches and tests his fighting ability, then against a spider-like senida. When fighting the senida, her motivation was to have Trellin experience fighting alongside another hunter as a partner and an equal, not as a student being hand-held through the fight. The two emerge victorious, and continue on their way toward the capital.

During the journey, Avira reveals more about her identity, and her mission. She identifies herself as the shadow of the previous guildmaster, Enryn, and claims that he was murdered during the last challenge by the current guildmaster, Verrick. Trellin is taken aback by this accusation, and considers it unlikely, but doesn’t argue with Avira on it. Shaken, he turns his sights toward getting them both through the opening ceremony, with the realization that he’s now shadowed to someone who he barely knows.

Trellin also learns more about the Crown Challenge itself - specifically, that the challenge takes place on a distant island, infested with hideously-strong, dragonlike fiends known as krytir. Once a decade, a matriarch is born there, growing with terrifying speed and evolving stronger by the day. Worse still, she bears marks, can use the hunters’ magic, and passes it on to any offspring she has. The very reason for the Crown Challenge’s existence is to slay her, and end the threat she poses to the world for another decade.

On the morning of the opening ceremony, the pair enter town at a dead run, hoping to enter Linead, attend the ceremony, and depart at high speed, before Verrick can have the opportunity to target Avira. Trellin goes along with it, tolerating. They’re stopped at the gate and forced to surrender their weapons, which infuriates Avira - Verrick has been weakening the rights of hunters and citizens ever since taking the gold-tag. They continue in, though, and make it to the terrace where the ceremony is held.

Ignoring those who try and slow her, Avira casts her name into the running, and the two listen as religious officials open the Crown Challenge. When it ends, they try to depart immediately, but Avira is stopped by a clerk who informs her her registration is out of date. Left without an alternative, Avira goes to update her paperwork, while Trellin visits the imbuer to have additional marks tattooed on now that he’s got a shadowing and is permitted.

At the imbuer, Trellin has two marks added - the first, Forest’s Embrace, which will allow him to create a shield of bark to hide him and his party behind. The second is Radiant, His Gifts, which is a much more expensive and aggressive mark, which collects sunlight any time his aura is active, via tattoos on his face, and allows him to discharge that energy in one blast. After receiving his marks, he leaves to rejoin Avira.

He quickly finds himself lost in the labyrinth that is the Hunter’s Guild headquarters, though, and is slowed. Worse, when he rounds a corner, he finds himself in front of Guildmaster Verrick himself - who greets Trellin warmly, offering his sympathy for Avira’s grief over her master, and asks Trellin to wish Avira good luck from him. The two shake hands, and Trellin continues searching for their pre-decided meeting place.

Lost in the crowd of people and hallways, though, Trellin finds himself starting to suffer from the heat and noise of it all. He manages to ask directions, and finds his way to the courtyard they’re meeting in, but as Avira approaches, his condition worsens, and he begins vomiting. Avira reaches him, and at that point, it becomes clear that he’s become suddenly and strangely ill, seemingly of no natural cause.

With no other options, Avira carries Trellin to the medical wing, where she flags down Silvanus (Silvos), a silver-tag healer high in the ranks of the mender’s wing. Silvos assesses Trellin, but finds that he’s been poisoned - and Trellin confesses he met Verrick and shook his hand. Upon hearing that, Avira becomes enraged, driven instantly to the offensive. Rather than let her charge out to murder the guildmaster, Silvos knocks her out, leaving her comatose on a cot while he tends to Trellin.

As he heals Trellin, Silvos explains the second half of Avira’s story. During the last challenge, when a last-minute emergency contract came in, Avira was dispatched to handle it. And while she was on that contract, she was accused of attempted murder, leveraging her fiend-like heritage to cast her in a fearful light. She was imprisoned and tortured for six months, trying to force a confession out of her, before Silvos was able to find a means to clear her name. And during this imprisonment, while the challenge continued, her mentor Enryn died. Silvos backs up Avira’s claim that this death was not an accident, as the official record says, but a murder. As Trellin processes all of that, Silvos finishes his work, and puts Trellin to sleep.

When he wakes, Trellin overhears Avira and Silvos discussing their relationship, and their past. Before he can reveal he’s not sleeping, Silvos asks about Trellin, and why Avira took him as shadow. Avira confesses that while Trellin can certainly help a little, her motivations were more for Trellin’s benefit, as she recognized that Trellin was in a bad situation that would likely end with his expulsion from the guild, or worse. Recognizing that he was a hunter with potential, she instead chose to whisk him out of that bad situation, taking him under her wing.

After Trellin awakens, the three go to Silvos’s office, where he finalizes preparations for the journey to the island of Deldynne, where the challengers will race to see who can slay the krytir matriarch first.

Arc 2 - Deldynne

Avira, Trellin, and Silvos leave Linead, bound south for the port town of Feinwer. They travel fast - and before long, Trellin has a run-in with his new power, Radiant, His Gifts. Accidentally charring a section of forest - and narrowly missing Silvos and Avira - Trellin realizes he has to exercise more caution than he has in the past. Silvos offers to find some mud to cover his marks, but Trellin refuses. Instead, Silvos makes him a strip of leather and cloth to cover the tattoos on his face when he does not want to trigger an explosion.

On their way to Feinwer, though, they find the road closed near the town of Samsira. Another pair of challengers are trapped there - Sabbas, a stout and stolid silver-tag axe-wielder, one of Avira’s old colleagues, and his shadow Korinn, a chitin-tag horn-wielder. They say that the road has been blocked by a shimarra, a large, menacing fiend, and that until it’s cleared, the road remains closed.

Avira is immediately suspicious, as this is outside a shimarra’s normal ranges, or the season when they become active. She suspects that Verrick did something to lure the shimarra out, and Sabbas seems to share those concerns. With no other option, she agrees to aid Sabbas, and together, the four of them track and hunt the fiend.

With it dead, though, Sabbas indeed finds a fiendlure hidden nearby, which drove the shimarra from its nest. It was clearly planted by Verrick - but the sight of it incenses Sabbas, who reams Avira, arguing that this squabble between the two of them has now put innocent lives in danger, and has gone too far. Avira refuses to take blame for something Verrick did, and the pairs depart, sullen and no longer speaking. With the road clear, they continue on to Feinwer.

Upon reaching the port town, they find the ship to Deldynne has already departed. Left waiting for its return, Trellin trains and practices with Radiant, His Gifts. As soon as the ship sails back into port, they pile on board, departing.

On the way, Trellin uses the shimarra hide taken from the slain fiend to augment his cuirass, adding strength and flame resistance to it. He also gets to spend more time with Korinn, the two shadows sharing none of their guides’ animosity toward each other. He learns that Korinn grew up in the capital, watching and admiring Sabbas’s ethos and stubbornness from afar before finally convincing the stern man to take her as his shadow.

On the final night, Trellin is on the deck working on his armor when he winds up eavesdropping, witnessing a conversation between Silvos and Avira. Silvos apologizes for using Enryn as motivation to keep Avira going while suffering and imprisoned, having known full well that Enryn was already dead. Avira stops him, finally admitting that she knew the whole time that Enryn had died, and she knew how worried Silvos was about her.

She seems to leave the conversation open for Silvos to take a step further in their relationship, but Silvos backs out instead, wishing Avira a good night. Avira seems put out, but leaves, returning to her cabin. Trellin takes the opportunity to confront Silvos as to why he wouldn’t try to deepen their relationship when clearly he’s in love with Avira. Silvos rejects the idea, claiming that Avira isn’t interested in him, that she’s too focused on winning the challenge to have emotional room for him, and that since Silvos was Avira’s healer, it would be inappropriate of him to leverage that relationship into something romantic. He sends Trellin back to his cabin, but lingers on the deck alone.

Upon arriving at Deldynne, the hunters scatter immediately. Sabbas drags Avira into the guild hall to register their hunt. Taking pity on Trellin, she allows him to wander the hall and see the sights. Trellin does so, and winds up witnessing a researcher there looking for help. He gets the idea of using the researcher’s tracking data on monsters and hunters to catch up on lost time. After seeing the man slighted by a pair of local hunters, Trellin moves in, agreeing to help the man with his project if he’ll help narrow down their search for the matriarch.

Avira returns as the negotiations begin, and the man - Kevin - asks Trellin to use an aura-infused plate he’s designed to register the signature of the matriarch when they find her. With their agreement complete, Avira and Trellin exit into the jungle.

But on their way out, they pass a set of enormous horns - and Avira explains that the horns, longer than several people standing on each other’s shoulders, came from a matriarch that was allowed to grow and evolve for a single week after hatching.

Once outside the town, Avira and Trellin climb the thick, dense jungle into the walkable top branches, the Veil. They begin searching the nests of ordinary krytir, hoping to find the matriarch’s egg, but to no avail. When one of the krytir attacks, defending its nest, they’re driven back down to the jungle floor, rescued by a local hunter named Mel, and when the egg starts glowing from the jungle floor, signaling an imminent hatching, are forced to search the caves lining the mountainous terrain instead.

Searching the caves is a long, tedious, and dark process. They split up to cover more terrain, and Trellin winds up running into another hunter. The two strike up a conversation as they search, but as they exit, Trellin sees Verrick approaching - and he realizes the hunter he’s been speaking to - Myles - is in fact Guildmaster Verrick’s mysterious shadow.

Avira and Verrick wind up returning at the same time, and a standoff begins, with both casting threats and accusations at the other. The confrontation is interrupted by other hunters passing through the area, and they split, but with promises of violence to come. Trellin and Avira leave, eventually finding a cave to sleep in and killing the monster already calling it home. But before they can rest, a strange light fills the sky - and announces that the egg is hatching.

The pair abandon hopes of sleeping, racing toward the glowing egg. But it’s out of reach, high on a pillar, and there are too many other hunters heading the same way. They save another pair from accidentally running headlong into a fiend’s nest, but by the time they reach the egg, it’s too late.

The egg hatches with explosive force, spewing the nascent matriarch out into the world. She evolves rapidly as she shoots away, but seems to still be growing and developing. Avira warns that it’s an erratic hatching, and to let her go. The other hunters attack instead - and in defense, the matriarch shrieks, magically amplifying the sound to drive them away. Unable to stop her, the hunters watch as she turns invisible, then flies deeper into the jungle.

Trellin and Avira leave the hatching grounds, exhausted and sore. They find Sabbas and Korinn traveling on the same trail. Korinn, as exhausted as them, demands that Sabbas put his spite behind him and make camp with Avira, allowing all of them to rest longer. He begrudgingly agrees, and they put their tent up. Before he falls asleep, Trellin overhears Avira and Sabbas talking. Avira acknowledges that her contest with Verrick has gotten out of hand, and admits she feels bad that others were impacted by their war. Sabbas concedes he might have gone too far, and acknowledges that it wasn’t Avira’s fault Verrick did something like plant a fiendlure.

The two make up, and go their separate ways in the morning on much friendlier terms.

On their own again, Avira and Trellin head deeper inland, changing tactics. With the matriarch spawned and growing, they instead target places that she might frequent - sources of food, sources of water, and sources of mates. They find a lake with herds of mundane creatures around it, and lay in wait. Eventually they feel a rush of air, and the still-invisible matriarch materializes on the shorelines.

With their target located, now they need to lay the bait. Avira sends Trellin to slay a smaller fiend on his own to lure in the matriarch with. Since Trellin is a low-ranked hunter, she knows that he wants to progress during this Festival of Knives, and so she says that he can use this kill to rank himself up at the festival’s conclusion. Emboldened, Trellin hunts and slays a lizardlike goroki, returning to bury the body on the shoreline where they found the matriarch.

Sure enough, the matriarch returns, and sniffs out the offering they left. Avira and Trellin begin their attack on her - but are interrupted as Verrick and Myles begin their own assault, on both the matriarch and them. Recognizing that they can’t fight both the matriarch and this rival pair, Trellin urges Avira to flee. Myles launches an attack on him as they try to, putting his daggers through Trellin’s shield. Terrified and hard-pressed, Trellin reflexively fires Radiant, His Gifts. The explosion reacts strangely with the crystals around them, focusing the light and energy into tight beams. One clips Myles, who is forced to retreat, injured.

Avira and Trellin flee, mending their wounds, and run into another pair - the archer Draenis and her shadow, who saw the fight and came to engage. They offer Avira help, but Avira refuses. They witness the matriarch caught in a mating flight, and the group realizes that their time is running short.

When they leave, though, Avira and Trellin find themselves at the burning wreckage of a bridge over a deep ravine - burned by Verrick, they know. Rather than give up, they fire their aerial grapples, creating bridges for each other to safely cross on. On the far side, Trellin asks about Verrick’s motivations for doing all of this, for going so far.

Avira confesses she doesn’t know, but that she suspects it has to do with the guild’s status in Aradhen. As an independent organization who also possesses the continent’s only form of magic, that puts them at odds with Aradhen’s royalty, who would very much enjoy controlling such a powerful organization. Someone like Verrick likely gave them the means to have that control.

As they talk, though, a region alert is broadcast, and the sound of explosions is heard from ahead. They break into a run, finding a town along the shoreline below their cliffs, burning and besieged by the matriarch and her brood of mates. They race in to help however they can, quickly finding their way to the center of town and a sturdy stone structure there that they can evacuate residents into.

At the top of the tower, Trellin realizes that he’s not much use with just a sword and shield to his name. Instead of standing there waiting, he decides to take the fight to the matriarch, and leaps from the tower’s top onto her back. Battered and fighting to stay atop her, Trellin badly burns her with a Radiant, His Gifts, managing to drive her away from the town. He’s thrown off in the process, crashing down into the burning city.

Badly injured and reeling, Trellin tries to find his way out, but the smoke is thick and the streets are filled with fleeing civilians. He’s spotted by another hunter working to evacuate people - someone he soon discovers is Myles. But rather than kill him or abandon him, Myles carries him out, leaving him safely within range of Avira before fleeing.

Avira brings Trellin back to base camp, in time to see a ship sailing down the shoreline - their ship, from the main town, bearing Silvos and the healers. They descend onto the survivors, healing Trellin and the other injured. With the city still smoking, they’re alive - but badly in need of a new plan.

Arc 3 - Endgame

When a meeting is called among the hunters, Avira speaks up, refusing to return to the usual challenge. The current situation has changed, and needs a new response. She tells the other hunters that before they resume anything, they have to find the matriarch’s nest, culling her brood before they can hatch. They likewise have to find the matriarch herself, who still has powers of invisibility.

Still sore and healing, with his shield being mended by the blacksmiths, Trellin is left to join the egg-hunting group while Avira and the senior hunters hunt the matriarch and her consorts. Trellin is deeply jealous at being left behind, but sets himself to the task alongside Silvos and Kevin. They find the nest, and begin destroying eggs.

At the last, though, Trellin finds a tiny egg, small enough to fit in the palm of his hand. Kevin stops him before he can crush it, insisting that he can use the hatchling. Together with the plate Trellin bears, which contains the aura signature of the matriarch, they can send a distress signal to her, drawing her to them. Trellin is unsure, but recognizing that it could be an opportunity, agrees to pose the idea to Silvos and the silvers.

They return to base camp, but Silvos is occupied looking after the healers, so Trellin is forced to wait. Trellin goes to collect his shield. Another augmentation has been added - this time, a crystal lens in the shield’s center, where Myles had split the shield apart. With that, Trellin theorizes that he should be able to focus Radiant, His Gifts again, creating that hyperfocused beam. Before he can return to Silvos, the egg starts to hatch.

Trellin races back, aware that he’s out of time. He drags Silvos out, unable to wait any longer, and rapid-fire explains the situation - as the egg finally shatters. Left holding an infant krytir hatchling, Trellin and Kevin are left waiting for Silvos’s judgement.

Silvos initially panics, but agrees to hear them out. And upon hearing their plan, he begrudgingly agrees, with recognition that Avira will be very upset. Trellin insists, so he bonds Trellin to the baby krytir with a new bonding band, sealing the two together. Trellin names the hatchling Ayanella, much to Silvos’s displeasure.

Avira and Korinn return. Korinn is thrilled to see Nella. Avira is less so. She’s furious with Trellin for doing something like this, and with Silvos for allowing it. But, that frosty demeanor melts just a little as she meets Nella and starts to warm to the hatchling. Another meeting is called, so Trellin hides Nella in his tunic to sleep and joins her.

At the second meeting, Avira again restates that their position is too precarious to return to the scattershot, almost-random search of the Crown Challenge. Draenis reinforces this by saying that she spotted the matriarch flying out over the waters, testing her wings and strength. If the matriarch leaves the island, they will have lost, so this is a pointed warning that they’re out of time.

Trellin puts forth a new plan - Kevin’s plan, that they will use the plates with the matriarch’s signature to lure the matriarch in close. He doesn’t admit to Nella’s existence, though, and pretends that they’ll do this with the offering of a slain bait beast, just like before. When Verrick tries to disregard his input for being too junior, Trellin becomes frustrated, raising his voice at the guildmaster, along with Kevin.

Verrick is forced to acknowledge that Trellin’s plan could be one of the last remaining to them, but does not like the way he’s been spoken to. He agrees to try the plan, but warns that if the plan does not work, Trellin’s hunter career may pay the price. Avira is incensed at the threat, but the hunters disperse.

In the aftermath, Silvos adds an augmentation to Trellin’s Forest’s Embrace tattoo, strengthening it. Dinner is served, and Silvos and the others force Avira to socialize with them, instead of retreating back into her isolation.

The next morning, the final assault begins. Trellin and Kevin go to perform the attunement of the plates to Nella, and fire the signal that will summon the matriarch. Trellin gives Nella to Kevin and sends him back to camp, continuing on his own to rejoin Avira and the silvers.

But before he can reach them, he’s attacked and knocked unconscious. He awakens bound and trapped inside a hollowed tree, with Myles there. He confronts Myles about his involvement with Verrick, but Myles defends him, saying that Verrick’s path is the only way forward for the guild, whose very existence is threatened by the royalty. Myles says that he was told to handle Trellin, and he has. He urges Trellin to leave, fleeing quietly, and that if he remains, Verrick will almost certainly order another lackey to kill him. Throwing a fiendlure at Trellin’s feet, Myles leaves.

Trapped and bound still, Trellin can do nothing but wait. Eventually, Nella finds him, flying into the nook - but so too does a large, spined fiend. Nella bits through his bindings, freeing him, but if he wants to escape, he’ll have to defeat the fiend.

Choosing to risk the fight instead of leaving Avira to be killed without him, Trellin charges in, taking the spined fiend on. He wins, starting to return to Avira and the silvers, but hears a strange noise - and realizes that the signal would attract the matriarch to Nella specifically. And now that Nella is here, so too is the matriarch.

Trellin runs, fleeing back toward Avira - who he can now feel is mired in combat herself. With the matriarch at his location, he knows that doesn’t leave any good options for her opponent. He races back, dodging blasts that wither the forest itself around him. And as he emerges back into the clearing they chose as battlefield, he finds Avira under attack from both Verrick and Myles.

His arrival - and the matriarch’s - brings that fight entirely to a halt. Trellin dumps out Radiant, His Gifts, using a potion given by Silvos to strengthen his heritage magic far beyond normal levels. Between that and the crystalline lens in his shield, the ability turns into a fearsome laser, burning clear through the vulnerable membrane of the matriarch’s wings. Verrick, Avira, and Myles are quick to begin their attack in full, with her grounded.

The other silvers return, hearing the sounds of combat, and the battle is on. Together, they wear her down, trading blows and working together at last. The steels split away, holding off her consorts so that the silvers can focus on fighting the matriarch. As the fight intensifies, though, Sabbas is caught exposed, and takes a horrible blow.

The fight immediately shifts as the silvers scramble to cover for their downed comrade. Trellin fires Rootbound, snaring the matriarch in place, and pours his full energy into holding her.

Verrick, however, goes on the attack, recklessly assaulting the matriarch and paying no mind to their efforts to contain her. In doing so, he shreds Rootbound, weakening Trellin’s ability to hold the matriarch in place. With no option left if she wants to save Sabbas, Avira abandons her attack, positioning herself between the matriarch and Sabbas, and goes on the defensive. They are left to watch, helpless to prevent it, as Verrick kills the matriarch.

When the matriarch lies dead, however, the scene turns unfavorable to Verrick. As he dismounts, the matriarch’s scale in hand, Korinn bears down on him, giving a tongue-lashing for how he abandoned her guide. The other hunters respond in kind, and when a deeply injured Sabbas takes the scale away from him, no one objects.

Trellin is faced with the realization that on this island, isolated away from the rest of the guild, the true winner of the challenge is the one who earns the respect of the others. That was the true threat that Enryn posed to Verrick, and a barrier Verrick likely knew he could never overcome.

The question is posed as to who will claim the gold, then. With Verrick being discounted by most of the hunters, the two forerunners are Sabbas and Avira. The hunters Avira saved at the egg’s hatching come forward to speak in her favor, as does Mel. In the end, Sabbas withdraws, admitting that Avira has him beat. Verrick protests, but no one pays him any mind, and Avira is declared the winner of the Crown Challenge.

Thus begins the long journey back to Linead. In the aftermath, Avira finds a spine from the fiend he fought, identifying it as a pikmoro, a chitin-ranked fiend - and tells him to register the spine as a trophy.

Nella’s fate is also raised. Initially, Avira moves to kill Nella, but Trellin and Kevin are able to convince her that Nella is a valuable research subject, and that since she’s bonded with Avira, she likely poses no danger. Avira is doubtful, and warns Trellin that Nella may be put down at a later date, but allows them to remain together for the time being.

Avira then sets about talking to Myles. During the debate about the scale, Trellin raised the point that Myles attacked him, left him bound in the wilderness. Verrick quickly cast off responsibility for his shadow, leaving Myles to face punishment alone - a facet Avira hopes to target and woo Myles to her side. Myles is recalcitrant, though. Discouraged, they set sail.

On the boat, Trellin makes another attempt, speaking to Myles alone. Watching Verrick’s schedule, he manufactures an encounter between him and Verrick, with Myles listening from a short distance away, and gets Verrick to cast off any ties with Myles. When he returns, he finds Myles discouraged and shaken, realizing at last that he’ll be left to face an attempted murder charge alone, one he has no chance of winning.

With this last play, Trellin is finally able to convince Myles to trust in Avira, and Myles agrees to help Avira in her investigation against Verrick.

They return to Linead, and Avira is sworn in as guildmaster. In the afterparty, Trellin realizes Avira is acting strangely, especially after finding a statue of Enryn. Leaving her, he races to find Silvos, warning him that something is wrong with Avira.

Silvos races back with him, hurrying to comfort Avira. And with the tension of the Crown Challenge finally over, and Silvos there with her, Avira breaks down, finally letting out the grief she’s been clinging to for a decade. Trellin retreats with Korinn to tour the city as Avira and Silvos kiss, leaving them to their own devices.

And with that, life begins as usual for the new guildmaster and her shadow - but Avira finds a frosty letter waiting for her from Aradhen’s royals, opening an uncomfortable relationship between them.

As the story closes, Kevin returns to his new workshop, only to find a strange figure waiting there - one who wants him to find strong hunters for her. And so, even as they settle into their new lives, a new door begins to open.