One man wants to save an Empire, the other wants to bring it crashing down... Oconic Gates make the Empire tick. Thanks to this portal network, journeys across the Mulai Empire are instantaneous. The Gates allow citizens to travel two miles or two hundred miles in the blink of an eye, with no more effort than stepping through a doorway. Celebrated Caster-Colonel Lokke de Calvas, commander of a legion known as the Old Hundredth, uses the Gates to keep the Empire safe. But when a murder thrusts him into a battle he's unprepared and ill-equipped for, the Oconic Gates could be his salvation. Ember Cobb, ex-caster and grouchy merc, uses the Gates to hide from his past in the Ocosconan Wilds, fighting alongside a band of Empire-hating separatists. There, he discovers a world he never knew existed and enemies he never imagined. The Oconic Gates could kill him. In an age powered by Oca - a force that men once called magic - what Lokke and Ember find through the Oconic Gates will change everything. Once Called Magic is the beginning of an epic, fantasy thriller, where swords are museum pieces, the old wizards are dead and performing magic is as easy as cracking open a can...