The following synopsis reveals the complete storyline, including major plot developments, key twists, and the series ending. A detailed book-by-book breakdown is available upon request.

The Solstice Treaty

When a young miner dies on an Appalachian mountain, three lives are drawn to the forests of West Virginia: Luke Steele, a park ranger plagued by visions; Tess McCoy, his estranged lover with a violent secret; and Takashi Okahara, a reclusive CEO seeking revenge. Beneath the mountain, they uncover a root of the World Tree—a buried portal to the EverShade, a domain where seasons take inhuman form.

Crossing through, Luke and Tess are rescued by the Jack in the Green, the demigod of Summer, who draws them into his brewing war with his grief-stricken brother, the Jack of the Frost, Lord of the WinterWild. Once united, the brothers now stand on the brink of civil war, their land poisoned by betrayal, necromancy, and a cursed circlet forged from Judas Iscariot’s silver coins. Green’s hospitality hides his true purpose: to use Luke and Tess to escape the domain that binds him.

Long before their arrival, the EverShade was caught in another conflict. In 1944, Nazi occultist Fritz von Ehrlichmann, pursued by Captain John Roberts’ U.S. platoon, entered this otherworld and struck a pact with the Solstice King, lord beneath the World Tree. Known as the Solstice Treaty, it granted the King unlimited access to the mortal world while allowing Fritz to transport an atomic bomb into America through the EverShade. The plan collapsed when Frost slew the King and entombed the weapon in ice.

In the present, Green marches his army into the WinterWild and, amid the battle, kidnaps Tess, leaving Luke at the mercy of Frost’s forces. Rescued by Roberts, Luke learns Frost is not the villain he believed, and that Green has seized the frozen weapon, intending to use Tess’s blood to break free. Luke and the soldiers set out to find her. Elsewhere, Okahara (still haunted by his father’s death in the Nagasaki bombing) enters the EverShade to finish what the Axis powers could not. Killed within sight of the bomb, he is resurrected by Green as an undead pawn. After Luke and Roberts free Tess, Green banishes Luke underground and heads for the portal, determined to finish what Ehrlichmann and the Reich began.

Within the roots of the World Tree, Luke learns Roberts is his father and his long-vanished mother is Maera of the Bloom, Mistress of Spring, marking him as the new Solstice King. Embracing his new power, Luke, Tess, and Roberts pursue Green, destroy Fritz’s reanimated host, and free Okahara from Green’s influence. As the bomb nears the portal, Okahara regains control, helping Luke and Tess escape before the detonation. In doing so, he redeems himself and sacrifices his life to honor his father’s memory. They return as the new Lord and Lady of the May, forever bound by the price of saving two realms.

But the Solstice Treaty is not undone. In 1945, as Berlin falls, Fritz von Ehrlichmann enters a hidden chamber replete with objects of immense power and reaches into the EverShade to grasp a hand as green as summer grass.