Jolenta survives to fight as a leader of the movement of freethinkers that some still call heretics. Twenty-five years ago, she tasted hope and despair. What can she offer to a young girl who has the ambition to change her own fate? And what will become of the resurgent heliocentric theory? As the Inquisition closes in, Draka and Schmidt manage to escape siege thanks to the sacrifices of their friends. But then Nowak approaches. The pair must bet on the faintest of hopes to achieve the grandest of destinies!

To fulfill Badeni's plan, Oczy heads for a fateful duel with Inquisitor Nowak. Gras. Oczy. Badeni. Jolenta. Piast. All have put their lives on the line in pursuit of truth. What will be revealed? Hope or despair?Twenty-five years later, amidst upheavals that threaten the authority of C--ity, a girl loses her father to the fate that God decreed and loses her own faith while taking action toward what she truly believes. What destiny awaits her?

In fifteenth-century Europe, heretics are being burned at the stake. Rafal, a brilliant young man, is expected to enter university at an early age and study the era's most important field, theology. But Rafal values Reason above all else, which leads him both to the shocking conclusion that the Earth orbits the Sun, and into the hands of the Inquisition! A decade later, two members of the Watch Guild, the dour young Oczy and the cynical Gras, find a hidden stone chest that details the secrets of the universe Rafal left behind. Dare they try to change their own stars by selling the heretical texts, or would that only lead to the stake and the fire?

The fascination Gras found in the heliocentric theory is left in the hands of Oczy. Clinging to faint hope in heliocentric theory, Oczy visits the brilliant, aloof monk Badeni with the stone box newly in his possession. Oczy and Badeni seek a new collaborator to help prove the theory. They find a girl despairing of the world, crushed by an era that laughs at the notion of a female scholar. Also entrusted with the research of Count Piast, a luminary of the geocentric theory, Badeni digs yet deeper into his efforts to prove the heliocentric theory. But even as they each pursue their respective hopes, overwhelming despair comes creeping up to them. Close your eyes. Plug your ears. Be ordinary. That's the only way to resist true knowledge.

THE SYSTEMS OF THE WORLD, REVEALED! Jolenta survives to fight as a leader of the movement of freethinkers that some still call heretics. Twenty-five years ago, she tasted hope and despair. What can she offer to a young girl who has the ambition to change her own fate? And what will become of the resurgent heliocentric theory? As the Inquisition closes in, Draka and Schmidt manage to escape siege thanks to the sacrifices of their friends. But then Nowak approaches. The pair must bet on the faintest of hopes to achieve the grandest of destinies!

EVERY KILL BEGINS WITH "K"? ? In the incident at the purification plant, religion founder Shimon Kamijima died, and J went missing. It seems as if the threat of terrorism is over. But a new leader named K, unknown to THIRD-I, was planning another terrorist attack underground. Can Fujimaru uncover the identity of the terrifying K and the true meaning of "Bloody Monday"?

An extraordinary epic, set a million years in the future, in the time of a dying sun, when our present culture is no longer even a memory. Severian, a torturer's apprentice, is exiled from his guild after falling in love with one of his prisoners. Ordered to the distant city of Thrax, armed with his ancient executioner's sword, Terminus Est, Severian must make his way across the perilous, ruined landscape of this far-future Urth. But is his finding of the mystical gem, the Claw of the Conciliator, merely an accident, or does Fate have a grander plans for Severian the torturer . . . ? This edition contains the first two volumes of this four volume novel, The Shadow of the Torturer and The Claw of the Conciliator.