All the men are dead - now it's the boys' turn. On a tiny archipelago, cut off from the rest of the world by a cursed sea, a handful of survivors live a precarious existence, clinging to their memories of the time before magic and their hope that those times will return. As far as he knows, Rory is the only boy left. Then the man comes, weaving his tales of a quest to find a powerful ring, and Rory finds himself embarking on a journey through terrors and marvels, once more in the world of men. And the moment of reckoning, when it comes, will bring an end to stories unimaginably older than his own.