In Kaeren, the Kenbar Rite decides your worth at sixteen: a mark on the wrist reveals your class-Warrior, Healer, Forger, Scribe, and so on. Or nothing.
Ael was that nothing. Empty. Cast aside by his own Elvar family, he scrapes by in the Lower District running errands for anyone who needs them. Until he finds a dark-metal bracer that should not exist: an object that responds to him, teaches him movements he never learned, and seems to have a memory of its own.
When an errand brings him across Mira Varen (a young noblewoman with too many questions and a family that prefers to keep her close), the world that has always told him he was worth nothing begins to crack. But some objects are not found by chance. And some people arrive to change everything.
Even when you do not know whether you deserve it.