All is not well in Chthonic City, Maine. People are anxious, sleepless. Road rage is on the rise, and the ERs overflow with domestic and workplace violence. Why? Because the citizens of Chthonic City are having recurring, terrifying nightmares about demons rising to walk among them, and they’re snapping. 

In fact, demons ARE rising. Slowly. One at a time, to dwell unnoticed among us as they multiply our misery. And they’re rising in Chthonic City where the veil between the Chthonic (the Underworld for which the City was named, though the meaning of the word has been long forgotten) and earthly reality is very thin. 

Demons cannot rise until a human soul is driven mad. Over the millennia, demons have crossed as they could, but never before has humanity been so stressed as it is now in the Western world. Never before have we been so starved for time, touch, meaning, purpose. Never have our circuits been so overloaded with gloom and doom, economically, environmentally, spiritually. Never before have the demons had such a vulnerable population. Scenting a chance to break free in numbers, they hurl themselves into our dreams, battering at our sanity. 

But these demons are not unopposed. In a crumbling church on the edge of town, an ancient Guardian has been watching and waiting. When the threat from the Underworld surges, the Guardian's job is to send out a call to a fresh crop – a cell – of Gatekeepers, and train them to descend into the Chthonic through the dream state and do battle with the demons, slaying them there before they can cross the threshold. 

In Chthonic City, a new cell of Gatekeepers – teenagers all – has just been summoned....