Sixteen-year-old half-alien Sydney Chambers leaves Earth to seek his long-missing father, and unearths a devastating, centuries-old secret about humanity.

No one knows exactly when it began or where it originated. A terrifying new plague is spreading like wildfire across the country, striking cities one by one: Boston, Detroit, Seattle. The doctors call it Draco Incendia Trychophyton. To everyone else its Dragonscale, a highly contagious, deadly spore that marks its hosts with beautiful black and gold marks across their bodies-before causing them to burst into flames.