The fighters are preparing themselves to step into Tovar's realm and put an end to the war he's started. They aim to rescue their captured allies and stop Tovar before he can resurrect Draorahm. They have no idea what waits for them on the other side of the portal, but they are ready to face anything that comes their way. The fate of Paxanthus rests on their shoulders, so they have no choice but to step into the unknown and face the greatest threat they've ever met.

The Puzzle of Peace moves beyond defining peace as the absence of war and develops a broader conceptualization and explanation for the increasing peacefulness of the international system. The authors track the rise of peace as a new phenomenon in international history starting after 1945. International peace has increased because international society has developed a set of norms dealing with territorial conflict, by far the greatest source of international war over previous centuries. These norms prohibit the use of military force in resolving territorial disputes and acquiring territory, thereby promoting border stability. This includes the prohibition of the acquisition of territory by military means as well as attempts by secessionist groups to form states through military force. International norms for managing international conflict have been accompanied by increased mediation and adjudication as means of managing existing territorial conflicts.

This collection of essays addresses the neglected issues of space, border and statelessness in international politics and contributes a much needed view from the South . Importantly, it asserts that chasms created by borders (including those between India and Pakistan) can be bridged by dialogue, a little analysed tool in international relations.

"Shifting Grounds brings together the existing social constructivist research in International Relations (IR) and political geography, and examines the interactive relationship between territory and war from conceptual, theoretical, and historical perspectives. The central premise is the following: territory is what states and societies make of it. Put differently, states and societies have adhered to different forms of territoriality across time and space, and territory as well as territorial control meant different things in different time periods and regions. Shifting Grounds makes two claims. First, how state elites conceive territory within and beyond their domains affect their military objectives as well as methods and strategies for waging war. Second, adherence to different forms of territoriality lead to different modes and patterns of war, and wars themselves may affect how state elites and societies conceive territories. The impacts of different territorial ideas and practices on war are illustrated through a wide variety of cases including but not limited to Revolutionary France, the Ottoman Empire, British colonial expansion in South Asia, and ISIS. The transformative roles that wars can play in shaping the dominant territorial ideas and geopolitical assumptions, in turn, are examined in the context of "systemic" wars, with an emphasis on the diverging impacts of such wars on Western and non-Western geographies. Shifting Grounds sheds light on the shifting and shifty nature of the relationship between territorial ideas and armed conflict not only in the context of the distant the past, but also in present-day global politics"--

This detailed and lucid volume is an essential resource for students of Asian Studies and International Politics.