She immediately suspects assassination, but soon she finds far more pressing matters to worry about.Īnd then everything starts going wrong all at once.

His fiance from a political marriage, Sarene, arrives from another kingdom to be told that he suddenly died during her journey, leaving her officially his widow under the terms of the contract.

He's thrown into the now-ruined city of Elantris, which has transformed over the last ten years from a majestic City of the Gods into a crumbling, filth-covered insane asylum filled with cursed immortals whose bodies do not heal from even the slightest injuries. The story opens with Raoden, the beloved Crown Prince of Arelon, waking up to find it took him in his sleep. The transformation still strikes at random, but now as a curse, condemned by all the religions of the world. In a cataclysmic event that tore open the land, the magic suddenly failed, turning the Elantrians into grotesque zombie-like creatures stripped of their magic and their glory. Anyone the transformation took-beggar, peasant or nobleman-would leave their old, mundane lives behind and move to Elantris, to live in glory, wisdom, and splendor, worshiped by mere mortals for all eternity.Įternity, as the introduction puts it, ended ten years ago. Elantrians were people who had been magically transformed by a strange effect that strikes people at random, turning them into near-immortals able to wield powerful magic.

Elantris part 2