Nineteen-year-old Remo Renato wastes his days wishing his real life could match the excitement of his fantasy books. The monotony and loneliness of his work as a healer are broken only by the promise of his favorite novels waiting at home; the worlds he longed to inhabit existed only on paper.

But when he finds a message in a bottle washed up in the cave near his seaside village, he soon learns that there may be more to ordinary reality than meets the eye. The message’s astrological allegory sends him on an illegal quest—fueled by curiosity to uncover its meaning, and by the fragile hope that real life might contain a glimmer of magic.

His journey across kingdoms leads him to an underground school, where he begins studying the banned subject of Astrology alongside his newfound friends: an exile and a minstrel. When a threat is made against Remo’s kingdom by the Saffiran Empire, the friends find themselves entangled in a secret, dangerous mission to build a protective astrological talisman.

In his pursuit of magic, Remo learns that the price of living his life—rather than merely reading about the lives of others—comes at the risk of his heart, his work, and his freedom, and that his own story is being written by the hand of fate.