Storms over the Western Continent

On Mist Island in the Kingdom of Tigers, the mill's axle broke, and the tax collector's horses rode into the village.

Aiden Vane was just a mill hand, but images of things from another world kept appearing in his mind. He repaired the axle, won the village a fair set of scales, and got his own name written in the tax farmer's ledger.

Hunted, raiding for grain, and fleeing into the woods, he went from mill hand to "Robin of the Greenwood," then from the forest to the throne. He relied not on his bloodline, but on machines that could be made to run, accounts that always added up, and brothers willing to entrust him with their lives.

The Kingdom of Tigers and its coal and iron. The Kingdom of Frogs, with its salons and gunfire. The Kingdom of Bears, with its snowy wilderness and strategic depth. The Kingdom of Eagles, with its open seas and self-rule. He fought his way across them all, only to face not an emperor at the end, but the White-Crowned Bishop, who had already calculated everyone's fate. The man didn't want his life. He only wanted to use him to unite the West, then place upon his head a crown he could take back at any moment.

The hardest battle was never about defeating someone. It was about whether he was willing to give up power.