From Introduction:
Reshina grew up in the fighting pits of the Southern Cities. But there was always more to her life than fighting. From an early age, she dreamt of an ancient, foreign temple, high up on a mountaintop. Asleep, but strangely awake, she walked its grounds and knelt before its idols. Over time, the dreams grew stronger, until she was convinced her visions showed her a place not in some astral plane, but here on Earth. Its call was a siren song to her. Reshina knew she must go to it.
She sold her life’s story to a publisher. Confessions of a Teenage Pit Fighter sold well, especially after the publisher hired another writer to add salacious scenes of sexual debauchery to the so-called “unexpurgated” version. But Reshina didn’t care. Why should it matter if her book made others rich? All she wanted was enough coin to travel north into the mountains, and find this temple.
And she did, for it was no mere vision. It was real. Inside its walls, she met the Illuminated Masters and was initiated. Now part of their cult, she donned her cyclopean armour and left her old life behind. For the Masters have need of her services, and she is eager to see their vision of the future come to fruition at long last.