Sixteen-year-old Kai, a magician's apprentice and former street tough, must travel to the Phoenix Empire, where his friend Princess Lian is studying statecraft, and help her escape so she can return home before her father, the king, dies.

When blacksmith apprentice Fletcher discovers that he has the ability to summon demons from another world, he travels to Adept Military Academy where must decide where his loyalties lie. The fate of an empire is in his hands.

In a world where all pleasures are severely restricted, Melkin Womper is apprenticed to a master painter where he discovers the Mirrorscape, a world inside paintings, and becomes entangled in a war between the restrictive Fifth Mystery and the rebels fighting to stop them.

In a place similar to Venice, Italy, two teenaged orphans, apprenticed to a maker of magic mirrors, begin to realize that their fates are tied to the magical protector of the city known as the Flowing Queen and to the ruler of Hell, respectively.