The Bridge is vast. It is timeless. So said Ennai Ehnee, the last man to cross it, but that was centuries ago and no one is certain what became of him. Wherever the Bridge leads, it stretches between the pillars of the world — all that’s left after Worldfall swallowed the land — and far beneath, swamping everything in a sea of perpetual fog, lies the chasm.

On the western side of the Bridge is the city of Wilat’Wilath, and the King’s brother has been abducted by the Far Kingdom. Either that, or he defected — nobody seems to agree which. A boy-thief and a bastard princess must pursue him over the Bridge to whatever lies across the wraith-infested chasm, in order to find the Cloudblown before the Farsiders use this mythical species’ immense power to dominate what’s left of humanity.

Bird, a lowborn thief from the depths of the Bridge, is caught between the schemes and plots of two kingdoms when he meets Embra, a princess — well, half a princess. As the King of Wilat’Wilath’s illegitimate daughter, she was never the most popular of the Astridian royals. She and Bird are soon thrown into a conflict far larger than either of them realise, and preventing a second Worldfall may well lie in the hands of two children who seem tied to the mist that fills the chasm — one who attracts it, who who repels it.

Chapter 1: Bird

Bird awoke to chirping. Nothing new—his Master’s lair was always awash with whispers of some plot or the drunken revelries that followed—but tonight’s seemed more urgent. Hurried footsteps pounded outside the storeroom where he dozed, and when he rolled over the edge of his pile of empty sacks and peeked through a gap between the timbers, he barely pulled back in time as a stout man thudded along the worn brickwork towards his door, flung it inward and stood panting in the archway.