Fifteen-year old Nasa Peregrine knows that he'll never be selected to bond with one of the wildly destructive, Jade-green crystals kept under careful guard by the Office of Humanity. After all, Nasa is just an average student, and everyone knows that average kids are doomed to lead boring, uneventful lives. That all changes when Nasa is unjustly declared a traitor by the Office of Humanity and is forced to flee the city of last refuge, or face a tortuous death. Pursued by the Harvester, the most powerful of the Jade welding elite, Nasa escapes into war ravaged lands where he discovers that an ordinary kid can have extraordinary powers to change the fate of an entire world.