For hundreds of years, once-human creatures called ravinors, who possess an insatiable hunger for human flesh, have plagued the Empire of Styr. Three times during that span of years, human forces had all but eradicated the infectious man-like monsters. And three times they have returned.

This time, only twenty years after the last Ravinor War, the creatures are back, but now they have become even more deadly. Led from behind-the-scenes by the mysterious Ravinor Queen, infected humans find themselves in a battle for their souls and control over their bodies in a dream world inhabited by the one known as the Shadowman. The Queen and her shadowy cohort's mission is nothing less than to at last turn the tide against the humans for control over the world. They have lain dormant and ineffectual long enough, and now the ultimate battle for species' survival is unfolding across the land...

Throughout the empire figures emerge who might have the power to swing the battle's favor to one side: A retired captain living in the northern regions of the empire; a young healer at his first posting; a famed scholar and his apprentice; an assassin tired of his profession that circumstances have forced on him; and a young woman, horribly scarred at birth, who is cursed--or gifted--to witness the ravinor dream where the battleground for souls take place between the two species.

The Ravinor Queen has been planning her opening gambit for centuries, and now the time is right for vengeance and the subjugation of the human race, once and for all. The battle is only just beginning; each side must vie to destroy the other in this tale for ultimate survival--or extinction.