The Will of the Many

Vis Telimus is really Diago, the fugitive prince of Suus, living under a false identity after the Catenan Hierarchy conquers his country and kills his family. He has survived by refusing to cede Will, the power citizens surrender upward through the Hierarchy. Quintus Ulciscor Telimus discovers Vis's unusual education and ability, adopts him, and offers him entry to the Catenan Academy in exchange for investigating what happened there to Ulciscor's brother Caeror. On the way to Caten, the Anguis resistance intercepts Vis and Ulciscor, and Sedotia tries to recruit Vis by threatening to expose his identity. Soon afterward, Anguis leader Arturus Melior Leos attacks a naumachia in Caten and kills thousands. Vis confronts him with an unusual stylus, Melior kills himself with it, and Vis emerges as the celebrated Catenicus before entering the Academy.

At the Academy, Vis advances through a rigid class system while forming close ties with Callidus, Eidhin, Aequa, and Emissa. He also investigates the mystery surrounding Caeror and Principalis Veridius. Beyond the Academy wall, Vis finds pre-Cataclysm ruins containing glowing writing, eyeless bodies, and references to Obiteum, Luceum, and synchronism. During the Festival of the Ancestors he learns that Ulciscor's wife Relucia is Sedotia, who tells him the Anguis still intends to use him. Vis later reaches a second site in the western part of Solivagus, a vast red dome containing a hidden Labyrinth guarded by lethal Remnants. He retreats after seeing another entrant die, but Ulciscor later orders him to return during the Iudicium. On a visit to Suus, Vis also overhears Military leaders discussing their covert use of Anguis violence to strengthen Military's position, and he secretly passes that information to Relucia.

Vis reaches Class Three and enters the Iudicium with Callidus and Aequa. He evades the competition long enough to cross the western river and return to the dome, where he passes the Labyrinth and finds Belli's body inside. Beyond it, a synchronism mechanism subjects him to a violent process and leaves messages cut into his arm before he escapes back to the Iudicium. Meanwhile, the contest has become a massacre. Vis and Aequa find murdered students and safety teams, and a scarred Anguis operative tells Vis that Military sponsored the assault expecting it to justify a takeover of the Academy, while the Anguis intends a captured attacker to reveal that the attack was sponsored from within the Hierarchy. At the Heart of Jovan, Emissa uses Will to kill an Anguis guard and save Vis, then demands the Heart after seeing his altered arm. Vis gives it up, but she drives an obsidian dagger into him and forces him from the tower. As he falls, the Heart inexplicably returns to his hand. Diago, an alupi Vis once saved, pulls him from the river. Vis later finds Callidus mortally wounded by an Anguis attacker and carries him toward the Academy, but Callidus dies before they arrive. Vis still returns the Heart to Jovan's statue and wins the Iudicium.

Five days later, Vis wakes to learn that a spreading rot forced Veridius to amputate his left arm and that his blood has been altered. Veridius says the hidden sites are connected to another Cataclysm and urges Vis to join Religion, but Vis instead chooses the Censor's office, where Callidus had hoped to serve. The two Synchronism sections then reveal the larger consequence of the dome. In one thread, another Vis sees the warnings cut into his arm, pays an arm as the toll for passage, and arrives in snowy Luceum. In another, a version of Vis in Obiteum meets the supposedly dead Caeror. Caeror explains that Vis has been copied across three worlds, Res, Luceum, and Obiteum, and that the versions remain briefly connected. He gives the Obiteum Vis a blade so they can send a warning back to the Vis in Res. The ending therefore turns the Academy mystery into a three-world problem tied to the Rending, synchronism, and Caeror's survival.