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After a mountain path collapses, Alexios falls down a cliff face. As a ledge gives way beneath him, an unseen rescuer catches his leg midair, though Alexios blacks out after striking the rocks upside down. He awakens in the mountain village of Karnats, tended to by a thirteen-year-old boy named Toska. Alexios possesses the Divine Protection of Evaluation, allowing him to perceive the intrinsic value and potential of people as radiant light. Seeing a brilliant light in Toska’s chest, Alexios invites him to leave and achieve renown, but Toska's older brother, Reid, interrupts. Reid is an insolent, crude young man whom the villagers treat as a pariah, yet Alexios observes that Reid emits the most blinding, overwhelming light he has ever seen. Alexios repays the villagers for his recovery by teaching them reading and arithmetic while failing to convince the unmotivated Reid to pursue world peace. Pursuers soon arrive: General Jittenborough and a giant rhinoman warrior named Gardan, sent by Alexios's noble father and the king to retrieve him. Born with impaired leg bones, Alexios had been used as his kingdom's strategic brain until its leaders lost their independence and his own internal light dimmed, driving him to flee. Alexios leaves Karnats with a Galewind Horse and creates a decoy to mislead the troops, but Gardan ambushes him on an alternate path. Toska arrives with rice balls, easily defeating twenty elite soldiers with raw strength before Gardan buries him under a rockslide. Toska emerges unhurt and reveals that it was Reid who originally caught Alexios on the cliff. Refusing to return, Alexios attempts to gouge out his own eyes to destroy his Divine Protection, but Reid catches his hands. Having already incapacitated Jittenborough and three hundred soldiers because their noise interrupted his nap, Reid effortlessly stops Gardan’s charge with a single finger and knocks the rhinoman unconscious. When Alexios writes his full noble name—Alexios Valentine Granberg—in the dirt, Reid wipes it away and renames him "Alec." Alec sends Gardan and the soldiers back with a message declaring that Alexios is dead. Hauroi, the village chief’s heir, gifts Alec a Galewind Horse, while the village happily banishes Reid. Lured by Alec's promises of fine women, food, and drink, Reid joins him on the horse as his first traveling companion. Accepting his new name, Alec laughs as he sets out to pursue world peace, confident his inner light will finally grow.