Charon, avid explorer, treasure seeker and part-time mercenary embarks on a doomed quest, which leads him into uncharted lands. Driven there by an insatiable hunger for glory, he awakens an ancient evil. Charon, who possesses all the requisite flaws, is a living gateway, a portal to the Otherworld, allowing one of the immortal Sage Kings to escape through his empty existence. Through him, a magical fiend is born, a terrible shape-shifter who can shed its skin like an insect each time it claims a host. It is a scavenger of souls, spreading death like a parasite as it lives and feeds on the corpse-rind of the world. The entire world is doomed. All hope is lost - or so it seems ... For in the shadow of death, the seed of a new soul shall fall. And a hero will rise with the power to unlock the secrets of the universe. All illusions will be shattered. The greatest mysteries of the cosmos revealed.