It's been six months since Aron of Clan Karal bound the last of the world's fundamental powers, that of Creation and Beginnings, into the long-delayed Fifth Axis. But he immediately vanished, and despite all the power of his own Sixth Axis, Daniel has been unable to locate Aron. Worse, the other adherents, those of Earth and Sky and Flame and Sea, have lost interest in Daniel's search. They've gone back to pursuing their own interests and industries, which Daniel is dismayed to learn includes selling their magic to others of witchkind. Disillusioned by what he sees as the others' lack of a sense of duty, Daniel returns to his Tower of Endings, and continues researching his own mysterious family and their strange, long-running association with the Axis that he-the last of their line-has controlled for the past twenty years. Along the way, he uncovers long-lost magics, unearths dark and petty secrets about his own past, and finally comes to a fruitless, damaging confrontation between Beginnings and Endings.In this third story of witchkind, and the final book in the Adherents of the Axis trilogy, Daniel must face a reckoning between duty and power, understand the relationships between the six Axes and their long-lost origin, and decide whether or not he can rise above the base desires and jealousies that brought him to the Tower in the first place. Along the way, Daniel will encounter some of witchkind's deepest mysteries, along with the simple truths of his people's existence.

The Fifth Axis is the engaging and unexpected conclusion to the story that began in Daniel Scratch and continued in Master of the Tower. But it is merely one of the many stories of witchkind.