In a time of blood and myth, humanity used its nuclear weapons to crack the world. In the year of blinding white light which followed, gods of death and cruelty poured in through the gaps and staked their claims. Now, two hundred years later, the city of Black Angel struggles to survive. The souls of the dead are burned into ash, smeared in books, then burned as offerings to the deadly and powerful Chahrboga. But Svana, one of the few readers left, sees books as something else: a glimpse of a time when human lives mattered. And when she collects the ashes of a lifelong friend in her most precious relic, she has no intention of giving him to Chahrboga. As Black Angel's population is ravaged by invisible soul-stealing demons, Svana learns that the soul she holds could be all that stands between them and total annihilation. Plagued by grief and guilt, and hunted by her loved one's killer, Svana sets out to save those remaining, armed only with the ashes and words in a dead artist's journal. Her crusade will bring her to the heart of Chahrboga's powers, and test just how far she'll go to hold on to a life taken too soon.