In the kingdom of Gernia, noble sons are bound by tradition to fixed destinies: the firstborn inherits, the second son becomes a soldier, and the third is given to the priesthood. Nevare Burvelle, a second son of a newly elevated noble house, has been raised from birth for cavalry service and enters the elite King's Cavalla Academy in the capital city of Old Thares. A capable horseman with an advantageous engagement and a seemingly golden future, Nevare expects to prove himself through discipline and duty. Instead, the old aristocracy looks down on the son of a new noble, and he finds himself entangled in the political maneuvering, discrimination, and cruelty of a fiercely competitive school. Years earlier, his father hired Dewara, a plainsman of the Kidona tribe, to harden him through brutal instruction. A ritual vision quest under Dewara's guidance carries Nevare across a strange series of bridges to a being called Tree Woman, who claims him as a weapon against the people destroying her own. As Gernia pushes eastward toward the Barrier Mountains and the forest-dwelling Specks, Nevare is caught between the world that shaped him and the magic that has marked him. Told entirely in the first person, this opening volume of the Soldier Son trilogy follows his first years at the Academy and the widening conflict between empire and the peoples it displaces.