Unbeknownst to ten-year-old Wil Wychwood, he comes from a long line of mages. But with the death of his grandmother and his world upended, Wil moves to live with "the Aunts" and finds himself in MiddleGate - where buses drive through brick walls and leaning houses dot streets named Wog's Hollow and Half Moon Lane. The four-hundred-and-ninety-four-year-old school, Gruffud's Academy, is out of this world too. With classes in numeristics, botanicals, cartology and verbology, and textbooks like "Magykal Spelling, Grammar and Palaver," this is no ordinary school. Yet something dark brews beneath the veneer of this idyllic hidden city. When Wil and his cousin Sophie rescue the sacred snakes of Narcisse, they find themselves swept up in a dangerous plot. The secret society known as the Serpent's Chain is on the loose, and Wil is carrying the very thing they've been searching for. "Beware the Serpent's Chain," they were told, but what does that mean? What dangers await Wil and Sophie as they unravel this wicked mystery?