The only game worth mastering is the one inside your mind. When sixteen-year-old Alex's life starts spinning out of control, he doesn't know how to get the reins back. His best friend has moved on, the girl he cares about is wasting away in plain sight, and his soccer coach has just handed his starting spot to a sophomore who wants it more.

Everywhere Alex looks, something is breaking, and nothing he tries seems to fix any of it. The last place he expects to find help is from a long-dead Roman emperor. But Marcus Aurelius didn't come by accident. Minerva, the goddess of wisdom, has chosen Alex, and she has reasons that reach further than a soccer season. Guided by an owl that moves between worlds, Alex is pulled into the centuries of four men whose stories shaped and were shaped by the Stoic philosophy they would be remembered for.

He doesn't just hear their stories. He survives them. Alex sails out of Cyprus beside a young merchant captain whose family fortune rides in the hold beneath them. He hears the bone break in the dark and watches a slave become a cripple without losing what cannot be taken. He watches a philosopher face down Nero in his own court and accept exile rather than silence. He walks the wind-scoured cliffs of Corsica beside a man who once advised emperors and now must learn to live on an island that does not care who he was. Each life ends. Each lesson costs something. And every time Alex returns to Colorado, the gap between who he was and who he is becoming grows harder to hide. The question is what he does when he gets back.