Precocious teenager Lutwee Wiggins has spent his life in an orphanage. His humdrum life is thrown upside down as December 16th (the day that strange magic stirs worldwide) approaches. It is on that very night that Lord Abraham Hedgewick, an eccentric, shape-shifting knight who claims to have known Lutwee's parents, lands on the orphanage roof bearing twofold news: Lutwee is a descendant of a long line of warriors known as the Paladins, and he is the target of impending danger at the hands of the orphanage headmaster. After escaping to Hedgewick's home in the mysterious World Beyond, Lutwee quickly finds that training to become a Paladin is not as easy as he expected, and that the magic of the world beyond is more treacherous than¿ it appears. But as dark forces emerge from the shadows in search of him, Lutwee must rely on everything he has learned to survive.