When young Grimes loses his mother and four older brothers in a suspicious accident, his eccentric professor father raises him in a secluded mountaintop community of academics called the Retreat. As he comes of age, he learns he is no ordinary boy. He is actually a member of a secret race called the Ancients. Using his enhanced powers of perception, he is trained in combat, science, and wilderness survival. To understand his true identity, he begins a long quest to seek out a reclusive 500-hundred-year-old wise Ancient known as Mentor, who warns him of an evil Sarcigen empire that threatens the enslavement of humans and the very existence of the Ancient race. Grimes meets a fellow Ancient, the enchanting Elsay. They fall in love, but their peace and happiness are short lived. The brutal Sarcigens are on their trail, intent on winning a war that has been brewing for hundreds of years. Joining forces with Willyum the Bushman (a logger with a mysterious past) and his large black bear, they must all fight to escape to the northern Kingdom of the United Princedoms of Koramar, which is the setting for Book II, Koramarian Ways.