Half a century after the Great War of the Broken Deterrence devastated the world, the Severed Marches have clawed their way back to stability. But beneath the region's reconstructed order, inexplicable disappearances and impossible reappearances have persisted for decades. Most dismissed them as remnants of a chaotic age-until children began to vanish. When the mayor's daughter disappears and returns days later, altered in ways no one can articulate, Amanda Reinhart becomes the first to sense the presence that followed her back. Joined by a detective with whom she shares a buried past and a pathologist confronted by bodies that refuse to remain dead, Amanda uncovers a pattern that predates human civilisation. As the fabric of reality begins to fray-shadows shifting against the light, time slipping at its seams-the trio realise that the child's return is not an isolated event but the opening of a door that should never have existed. Something is crossing into the world, and it is not coming alone. The Severed Marches stand on the brink of a second, quieter catastrophe-one born not of war, but of revelation.