When Johann, a sixteen-year-old misfit, sets out on his first solo hiking trip in the mountains of the Ilaria Forest and Nature Reserve he has high hopes that this will be the spring break birthday adventure of a lifetime. What happens instead is so much more than he could have ever imagined. After stumbling into a hidden cave, Johann is thrust into the magical land of Ilaria where he will come face to face with his destiny. After being reunited with the family he never knew, he begins to study magic under the watchful eyes of his parents. But all too soon his happy new world is shattered by murder and abandonment. Will he be able to find his way forward in this new life, or will he lose it instead?