With millions watching on live stream, a retired British school teacher running his heroic young battlemage avatar, Daxx, and his teammates—Qrysta, an Asian American dual-wielding sword dancer, and Grell, an Australian Orc—win the World Championship of Sword and Sorcery.

Next thing he knows, he finds himself alone in the middle of a wilderness he doesn’t recognize, with no sign of the others. Armed only with a crappy sword he has no idea how to use, and in beginner-level gear, he discovers, to his astonishment, that he is now his own avatar, Daxx. For real.

And wolves are howling nearby, and getting closer.

If he is to find out where he is, and what has happened, and why: first, he needs to survive.

And so the adventure starts, leading to a quest far more challenging than any he has faced before, in which the stakes are not only the fate of the realm but their very lives.