Brazil's deployment of the strategic-class spell Synchroliner Fusion in South America sets off a wave of unrest that reaches Japan just as the new school year opens. Now third-years at First High, Tatsuya and Miyuki Shiba watch anti-magician sentiment climb while young heirs of the Twenty-Eight Families gather in Yokohama to weigh a response, and a more immediate threat gathers just off Sado Island. Closer to home, the year's top incoming student, Shiina Mitsuya of the Ten Master Clans' Mitsuya family, goes missing, and her Course 2 childhood friend Saburou Yaguruma joins the search.