As the Wight Lords' armies march across the world, former fugitive and refugee Aust returns home to where the invasion began. He arrives in the devastated city of Majadan to join an underground resistance, but his allies are fractured and their leaders vie for power while his friend Shadmar Dukane wages a reckless, private war.

Shadmar escaped Majadan as a broken man. Now he has become an engineer of vengeance, a ruthless mage and torturer who'll stop at nothing to destroy the Wights. His victories have made him a hero of the resistance, but Aust fears that the longer Shadmar spirals into darkness, the more of his humanity he'll lose along the way.

But Shadmar and Aust don't stand against the Wights alone. Eris was one of those killed in the invasion, but she and the spirits of the dead on both sides are trapped, unable to escape from the city. Forging an alliance with her slain former enemies, Eris leads a ghost rebellion to free the captive dead, for the Wight Lords' atrocities go deeper than any of the living suspect.

When all three factions of the conflict converge, Aust learns that every slain foe becomes fuel for the Wight Lords' final weapon, a cauldron that burns the souls of the dead and converts them into raw magic. As the shape of the Wight Lords' agenda becomes clear, Aust will have to make an impossible choice, lest the world be consumed in an ultimate battle that neither the living nor dead will escape.