Keroc Danna is the leader of a small group of adventurers. They have been traveling for a few years.
When he returns to his home city, he notices clear changes. The city was always in poor condition and often full of bandits and mercenaries. This is also the case now. But there is something different about those who have set up camp on its outskirts. More and more, the mercenaries seem to be taking the law into their own hands. People are banned from showing up in places they previously had free access to. Many of these mercenaries are also wearing uniforms and this has never been the case before. In squares and taverns there are recruitment sites and the payment for joining the growing army is high.
In the city center there is now a huge, terrifying temple dedicated to a dark queen.
In the taverns, there is an expectation. There is talk of a war such as the world has never seen before, and there is talk of a new great lord and that he has dragons.
Keroc Danna instinctively feels that what is about to happen is evil. Not evil in the sense of war, but something much deeper and far more terrifying. Something that calls to the depths of the soul, from the darkness that all humans carry within them, but which they push away in order to be human.
When he looks at the temple in the city center, the feeling is even clearer. It fills him with a terrible horror.
When he returns to his sister's house, he learns that his young niece, Arianna, has joined the army.
To protect her, he enlists himself. Because Keroc is well known among the local recruits, he is given a low officer's rank.
- from the publisher's blurb