An untimely demise begets a flight most unforeseen. Once more cast adrift upon the merciless tides of the world, bereft of sanctuary, dark and perilous arts are wielded to wrest a soul from the abyss that would have otherwise claimed it. Aufelia stirs at last from the depths of oblivion-but is she yet herself?
The realm groans beneath the ruinous yoke of avarice, laid waste by the insatiable hunger of opportunists. A dear companion languishes in torment, shackled within a hellish prison, her rescue a dire necessity. In the august court of the Duchess, the specter of treachery looms; conspirators, heedless of the multitudes who shall perish in their machinations, weave a web of war, devastation, and famine, their insatiable ambition an unquenchable blaze upon the land.
Yet in the shadowed corridors of Highsummit Manor, an evil most abhorrent-veiled in secrecy, safeguarded against the reckoning it so richly deserves-watches with malignant intent. Its gaze fixes upon the de Irchard sisters and all they cherish. The hour of reckoning nears, and in the throes of desperation, Dubart finds himself driven to the threshold of the forbidden, forced to invoke a corruption comparable to the one he seeks to destroy.
