The god of dreams has fallen silent; the goddess of nightmares ravages Egira. Her emissaries, the towering, indigo-skinned Vleth, conquer the land and transform its culture. Women wield exclusive power and men are slaves. Those who worship the god of dreams are incarcerated in underground catacombs.

Joran, the leader of a small resistance group, learns the Vleth plan to immolate hundreds of prisoners in a fiery ritual. He races against time to prevent the massacre. But the Vleth systematically hunt down and kill his followers, until he has only a young woman, a naïve ambassador and a beautiful but unreliable seer left to help him. Given that the Vleth command a ruthless army and are backed by the goddess herself, Joran's chances of disrupting the ritual and freeing the prisoners seem increasingly remote.